On the Dodge
by Candle Beck
Summary: Slash, Sam/Dean. AU. Cowboys. On we go.
1. Chapter 1

On the Dodge

By Candle Beck

. . . _but once they ruled the West!_

Dean was in a good way, fat-pocketed banging through the batwing doors and breathing deep of the smoke like a man breaking the surface of the ocean. The saloon was banked with shadow, the lamps burning low and counting on the sun to bleed through the doors and the dust-caked windows. Dean pushed his hat back, found his brother playing cards at a back table with three strangers.

Sam was slouched back, black hat tugged down to hide his eyes, his mouth working on a toothpick. Dean could tell from how he held his cards, that crooked fall of his wrist, that Sam was bluffing at the moment. He could tell from the barest curl of Sam's lip that he was gonna get away with it, too.

Dean came on him strong, running his mouth fast and grabbing at Sam's shoulder. Sam shoved Dean's hand off without changing expression, answering none of his questions. He slanted a look up at Dean from under his hat brim, a conspiratorial hint of warning, and flicked a pair of coins into the pot, seeing and raising.

Dean grinned at the other men, indistinguishable with their heavy oil-covered beards and shapeless hats. "How we doin', fellas? Everybody gettin' on all right?"

The man dealing glowered at Dean blackly, his teeth the color of chaw and pitted. "Keep him quiet," he said to Sam.

Sam smirked mildly. "Dean, keep quiet."

"Takin' orders now, are we?"

But Dean left it at that, fading back behind his brother's shoulder to watch Sam take the pot. They started another hand and Dean took a moment to case the men's iron and found it well-maintained, well-used. Their hands were misshapen with scar tissue and formerly dislocated knuckles, cramped around the cards. They were glaring at Sam like he'd shot their dogs, folding one after another.

"Call," Sam said, his voice soft, slow and threatening. He flipped his cards. "Jacks over threes."

Dean whistled silently. He managed to keep from grinning outright, but only by a hair. Sam was impassive, one big hand at rest on the table. The dealer was the only one still in and he had a dark cloud of disbelief riding his brow. Then he smiled with his awful crumbling teeth, cold mean smile as he flattened his cards for all to see. Queens, three of them, usually good enough.

Sam reached for the pot, the muted light striking randomly off the pearl buttons on his cuff. Dean didn't miss the dealer dropping his hands off the table, still smiling that bad-news smile.

"You're pretty good, huh," the dealer said. Sam didn't answer, one shoulder half-raising in a shrug. "Y'know how I know? 'Cause _I'm_ pretty good, and even I can't see how you're cheating."

The room went still and silent, dead as a stone. Men had been killed for a tenth as much in this room. Sam's dirty once-white shirt flickered as the muscles in his back tensed. Dean pasted on a big stupid grin for the men, all of whom had at least one hand disappeared under the table.

"Hell, son, no need for that kinda talk," Dean said, words crowding together in his throat. "Don't wanna end it on a down note, do ya? We were just going anyway-"

"I wasn't cheating," Sam said, his voice still low and even but so goddamn dangerous for all that.

"Course you weren't, who said anything about cheatin', let's go."

The dealer nodded, leaned forward. "You go. The money stays. Everybody lives." He leveled a malicious glare at Sam, circles of hell spinning in his eyes. He would have had as much luck trying to unnerve a lake.

"Man makes a good case," Dean said hopefully, eyeing the exits.

"I won that money fair, Dean," Sam said without taking his eyes off the man.

"Yeah, but he really seems to want it." Dean pulled off his hat, scratched through his gritty hair. He wished Sam would at least put his hand on his Colt, at least for show. "You gonna make a big thing out of it?"

"I wasn't cheating."

"You can die," the dealer broke in, getting impatient. "You can both die--no one's immune."

"Jesus, now you got him mad at me too," and Dean jammed his fist into his brother's shoulder, looked over the three men with their thick murderous hands and hateful eyes. Dean shook his head, stepping aside. "You're on your own on this one, Sam."

The room stopped again.

The dealer's eyes went huge, darting to Dean and back to Sam. A charred stub of cigar hit the table in front of one of the other men. All three of them stared at Sam, horror-struck.

"Sam," the dealer managed, fear roughening his voice down to almost nothing. "Winchester?"

Sam's mouth curved ever so slightly. "Look, Dean, he's heard of us."

Dean rolled his eyes, didn't say anything. He was watching the three men, seeing how the knowing of it changed them, made their mouths weak and their shoulders slack. All three of them still staring helplessly at Sam like men facing a firing squad, and it made Dean feel kinda sick but there wasn't anything he could do about it now.

"I, I," the dealer tried, stammering. "I never woulda--if I'd known who you were, I never woulda said you were cheatin'."

"Hey, sounds like an apology to me," Dean said. He was tired of this scene; he'd come in here in such a good mood. "Get the money, come on."

Sam shook his head, his jaw outlined sharply. He was still slumped down but only a fool would take him for at ease. The potential for violence shimmered around him like a heated wire, underlaid with an ever-present sadness that the world had brought him to this point again.

"You don't know my name, that makes it okay to say I was cheating?" Sam asked, sounding genuinely curious.

The dealer shook his head, paling under his beard. He was a brave man because everybody on the range at least had that going for them, and he was trying to keep his head up, trying his best.

"You weren't cheating," the man said, the words chipped off him.

Sam tipped his chin up. "Goddamn right." He finally let his gaze fall off the man, took off his hat to sweep the coins into it. His hair was matted and dusty and tangled at the ends, making him look years younger, and coins bounced and rolled across the floor, colliding with Dean's boot and dying slow spiraling deaths. Dean exhaled, the moment of immediate peril behind them.

They went up to the bar to settle up and get the coins changed to paper money. Sam didn't put his back to the men, leaning back on his elbows, eyes cutting around the room. Dean saw him check the angle of the light, if it was anybody's eyes, and the dim corners where someone might be concealed, and the places where there was room to move, to duck and roll. Sam was better when he moved.

The men were muttering, casting furious awed looks over at them. Dean caught smudges of accusation, a slur that sounded like their father's name. Dean flinched, and Sam snorted a quiet laugh, eyeing him and murmuring, "Steady."

Dean huffed, shoved the mess of paper money into his shirt. His skin prickled feeling every eye in the place on them, chewing over his brother and wanting to tear him into pieces like wolves.

Halfway out the door, and a voice rose unevenly behind them, climbing above the midday haze and drone, "Fuckin' _unnatural_ is what he is," and Dean spun back, his mind a perfect blank and his hand drawing out his gun clean as anything. He was going to put holes in every one of them, leave their faces shattered and bloody. He had a sneer warped across his mouth, his arm raising swiftly until Sam grabbed him, hauled him out into the sunlight.

Dean was struck blind for a moment. He stumbled, Sam's arm hard around his back, hauling him forward. Dean's spurs clacked and stuck in the wood boards, and he still wanted to go back and kill the man who had said that about his brother, but he couldn't see and he was no good to anyone like that.

"Dumb son of a bitch, you get us so far then you gotta go wreck it all," Sam muttered, jamming Dean's hat down on his head. "Just let 'em talk, what harm's it do letting 'em talk?"

Dean shook his brother off, jerking at his hat and fingering it back into shape. He scowled, feeling edgy and stupid and tired of this town.

"You got us into that one, Sammy," Dean said.

"Yeah, and I got us out of it too, 'member that part?" Sam shook his head, smiled a little bit. "C'mon, we got miles ahead."

Dean rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. When he looked up again, Sam had all but disappeared into the glare of the sun.

(break)

They rode the sun down, heading west. The land was green and wide because it was just recently spring, high mesas and mountains jagged teeth scribbled with snow. Their horses kicked up dust in little clouds like coughs, shaking their heads against grit and insects. Sam and Dean trotted them for miles at a time, slowed up to pass canteens and jerky back and forth.

Ambling next to his brother, Sam pushed his hat back, a streak of grime revealed on his forehead, faintly curved like the horizon.

"Saw a paper from back east," Sam said, voice roughed up by the ride. "That goddamn spiritualism is gettin' popular in New England again, we might have to head it off pretty soon."

Dean scowled. Silly stupid rich women playing at seances like it was a game, crowds of people buying tickets to see "ghosts" speak through some eerily beautiful medium in a self-induced trance--Dean's contempt was beyond description.

"Or we leave them to their reward," he said. "Let 'em see what comes of being ignorant. It'll weed out the chaff."

Sam snorted, took a long drink off the canteen, head cocked back. Dean eyed him, taut line of Sam's throat and that strange curling sensation in Dean's stomach that he had learned to ignore.

"Ain't very Christian of you, Dean," Sam told him with a smirk. Dean rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, well, Christian's never done much for me either."

Dean watched Sam tying the canteen back onto the side of his horse, and then they both straightened, exchanged a ready look. Dean grinned, kicked down, shouting, "Ya, girl!" as her power reared up beneath him.

They rode a ways farther. Dean felt a new rush of energy come through him as the sun sank down, fire-colored and melting. He whooped and kicked his girl into a gallop for a few hundred feet, hat clutched to his head against the wind and Sam hollering laughter, racing behind him. Dean looked back to see his brother grinning, a wedge of ivory in the gathering dim.

Coming up to the pass, Sam and Dean slowed, quieted. Sam's eyes dug into the shadows and crevices, the thickening brush, and the twilight was no hindrance to him; Sam had always been able to see superhumanly well in the dark.

"You know," Sam said contemplatively. "Every time I see Hole-in-the-Wall it's like seein' it fresh, for the very first time. And every time that happens I ask myself the same question: how can I be so damn stupid as to keep comin' back here?"

Dean half-smiled, because this was an old argument. "These boys are our best source outside Bobby, Sam, just because they're not so crazy about you-"

"They wanna kill me, Dean," Sam said, still with a kinda joking tilt to his voice. "Every one of 'em's got a bullet with my name engraved."

Dean hawked and spat to the side, a red buzz in the back of his mind. His hand found his gun unconsciously, riding on his hip.

"They can engrave all the bullets they want," Dean said. "Nobody's doing shit to you while I'm here."

Sam didn't answer, which was probably for the best. Dean wasn't what kept guys from taking on Sam. Dean was just his first layer of defense.

They came down into the valley, a shallow bowl under the emerging stars, rotting wood cabins and canvas tents loosely clustered. There was a fire burning, small shifting spot of orange leaking finer smoke into the sky. They were riding abreast but Sam fell back as they approached, letting the men see Dean first.

Four of them around the fire, one crouched with what looked like a skinned prairie dog on a stick, most of the way charred. Dean recognized Curry and Carver and Harvey Logan with his huge shoulders and face as blank as a shovel. Out of the light he sensed other eyes, metal glinting vaguely.

Dean put on a big grin. "Howdy, boys."

Flat Nose Curry smiled idiotically. "Hey there, Dean." He hesitated, eyes glancing and darting past Dean. "Howdy, Sam."

Sam didn't respond, and Dean didn't look back at him, his awareness of his brother simmering low. He kept his eyes on Logan, ice against ice. Seven months ago Logan had stuck a knife in Sam's back in a very literal way, twisted until Sam's shirt was soaked black with gore. Dean hadn't had time to kill him then, what with hauling Sam out and onto his horse, galloping insanely for Bobby's with his body hunched down over his brother's, pleading and his face covered in Sam's blood. He'd left Logan with a bullet in his leg, but the man looked to have recovered fine.

"How you been, Harvey?" Dean asked him.

Logan lifted his head, glared at Dean with the light of the fire manic on his face. "You ain't welcome here."

Dean flattened a hand on his chest, made his eyes go big. "Now, that hurts. Here I am ready to let bygones be bygones, and you're clinging to the resentments of the past."

Logan snarled. He'd never had much use for Dean's mouth. Dean flapped his hand dismissively at him, his heartrate picking up even if he gave no outward sign.

"No gratitude at all, no respect," Dean said, aggrieved. "Seem to recall that this camp was crawling with evil spirits 'fore me an' Sam got here, but hell, I must be mistaken."

News Carver bobbed his head eagerly. "No, you're right, Dean, that was here. Really did a number on 'em, you sure did."

"Don't care what you done," Logan said. "Your times is over now. Get gone, Winchester, and take that _thing_ you call a brother with you."

Dean had his gun drawn and Logan would be dead but something was jamming the trigger, cramping Dean's hand. _Sam_.

They were frozen for a moment, no one drawing to counter Dean and Dean saw the panic breaking on their faces, eyes rolling white and terrified. Sam was keeping all of them in place too.

"You oughta be dead, Logan," Sam said conversationally. Logan bared his teeth, veins standing out on his neck and arms as he strained against Sam's invisible hold. "Dean would have killed you just now if I hadn't stopped him."

Sam paused, taking a long assessing look at the men in the flicker of the fire. Dean could move, he just couldn't fire, but he didn't lower his weapon. He liked the look of Logan at the end of the barrel.

"So considerin' I just saved your life, maybe you wanna change your tone."

But Logan was not smart, fearless and merciless but in no way smart, and he hissed at Sam, "_Demon_."

"Mother_fucker_," Dean spat, squeezing the trigger so hard the metal ground against bone. "Lemme kill him, Sam, for the love of god."

Sam laughed, actually sounding pretty amused by the whole thing. "Nah, he's got a bullet coming soon enough without you gettin' involved."

Logan's eyes flashed uncertainty and a deeper fear, but Dean knew Sam was just playing it up. People believed Sam could do all sorts of terrible things.

"Now if y'all don't mind," Sam continued, raising his voice for those beyond the light of the fire. "We heard rumors the Union-Pacific's got a ghost problem. What can you tell us about that?"

The force holding Dean's trigger finger abruptly vanished, and he could see by the surprised way the men suddenly went slack that they'd been released too. Sam had made his point, sweat broken out on foreheads and faces, hands wrenched into hard futile fists. These men hated him, a million gruesome deaths playing over their expressions, but under it all was a terror so real and true it shook Dean to his foundations.

Stuttering, haltingly, the men told what they'd seen out there on the rails, the man cut in half by the train, the little girl found beaten to death in the space between the cars, the gas lamps that had all extinguished at the same moment, the plates and silverware that had flown and daggered through the club car. Sam repeated the names of the lines and stations, made Dean say them back so they would both remember. Sam's mouth was pinched, his forehead lined with exertion and pain.

When they'd wrung the men dry, Sam gave him a look that said they were done here, and Dean breathed out in relief, not liking the gray tint of his brother's skin in this light. He wound his girl's reins tight around his hand and leveled another glare at Logan.

"Ain't done with you, Logan," Dean promised, and spat into the fire. "You're gonna know what it feels like to get stabbed in the back, so whyn't you just think on that for awhile. Be seein' ya."

They left Hole-in-the-Wall at a fair clip, the echoes through the narrow canyons sounding like pursuit, but no one would dare come after Sam Winchester in the full dark. Dean's heart was still going too fast, and he could see Sam slouched in silhouette, breathing unsteadily. He'd put on a good show for the gang, but it was no mean thing, holding half a dozen men in place with his mind, and Dean knew he had to be near-dead from it.

"Here, c'mon," he said once they got free of the pass. He caught up Sam's horse alongside his own and flicked a match alight with his thumb. Sam blinked against the sudden light, his face drawn and wearied. "Get on."

Dean tugged at Sam's shoulder until Sam got the idea and clambered on behind Dean, slumping heavily on his brother's back and blowing out a rusty breath. His arms slung around Dean's waist, heat and exhaustion beating out of him. Dean reached behind, took Sam's hat off his head and started down the dark slope, leading Sam's horse.

Sam rubbed his face on Dean's coat, and Dean picked out the flat of his cheek, his pointy nose. He could ride all night like this.

"You believe me now?" Sam mumbled, chin pressing and giving.

"What? Go to sleep."

"'bout Hole-inna-Wall. Don't make me go back there."

Dean bit his teeth together, grit crunching. He'd misjudged the situation, that was probably true. Sam was drained and boneless because he'd had to fix the mess his brother had made, and this wasn't the first time.

"It's that goatfucker Logan," Dean said to the thick night in front of him. He felt Sam shaking his head, dirty hair brushing on the back of Dean's neck.

"'s all of them. Ever' one of 'em. Terrified of me."

The weight on Dean's back was deepening, Sam pressing himself close and crashing into sleep even as Dean tried to tell him:

"It's not you."

(break)

There were stories about the Winchester brothers, but you couldn't believe everything you heard.

Dean had once killed twenty men with a pair of Colt revolvers without reloading. He could shoot the heads off playing card kings from thirty paces, tell the make of any weapon he heard fired, put a buffalo down with a single shot, and it was always nighttime, and his hand was broken, and he was temporarily blind in one eye, and there was a dust storm picking up. They always took it a step too far.

Sam had been born in the middle of a fire. Embers had fallen from the ceiling and seared the shape of three linked sixes on the crown of his head, and the scar remained as tangible proof, expertly concealed. Sam could kill a man with a thought, lift a train car off the rails easily as a child's toy, curse crops into bearing ash and salt. When Sam was cut, he bled black.

It was their own damn fault. After their father had been murdered, Sam and Dean did nothing to discourage their growing legend, even as it turned fantastic and corrupt. They'd wanted people to be afraid of them, wanted the ten-foot radius accorded to them in saloons, wanted to be left alone and it seemed the easiest way.

The point of no return was probably in Hays City a couple years ago, when Sam had killed a shapeshifter that had taken the form of an eleven year old girl. It had been broad daylight on the main road, half the town strewn along the sidewalks in their Sunday best, watching Sam press his Colt to its white pinafore and explode silver into its heart.

They hadn't had a chance to explain, wouldn't have been believed anyway, and since then a lot of people had been trying to kill them. Sam and Dean were chased out of graveyards, shot at in churches. They'd been blamed for a cholera epidemic in Montana that killed off half a town. They were almost lynched in Kansas because the moon turned red the night they arrived. They'd been on the run so long Dean didn't know how to move at any other speed.

If their father were alive, they'd still have the loose confederacy of hunters to fall back on, hunters and the outlaws they inevitably associated with, hard-skinned trail-beaten men who'd been made credulous by life on the range, where almost nothing had a rational explanation. Most cowboys believed in ghosts.

Sam and Dean had grown up out here, sleeping in barns and under back porches and piled with the ranch dogs in the yard. Their father had known someone in every county willing to put them up for a month or so, someone who owed him a sack of cornmeal or a half-dozen potatoes, someone whose boy had just died of fever and left boots that would fit Dean first and Sam later. John had saved more lives than he could count, and the name Winchester had been a password, a key. They didn't have a home; they had several thousand.

But now John was gone and even both his misfit sons together couldn't fill the space he'd left. No one trusted them on their own. Bad rumors stirred up around those Winchester boys, the darkness shadowing them seeming less like the family curse than its essential nature, here in the second generation. Sam was a killer of children, a dog-throat-slitter, a monster being pieced together day by day, hour by hour, and Dean was his maniacal protector, sadistic avenging angel. Together they were everyone's worst fear.

It was all so unfair.

These things that Sam could do, the broken mirrors littered behind him and the bullets stopped dead in mid-air, three inches from Dean's forehead, the miracles and visions that followed Sam around, they were just that, outside forces that had attached themselves to his brother for foggy messianic reasons. It wasn't _Sam_.

Fourteen years old and Sam was in a rage almost all the time, at Dean and John, the torched landscape and surplus of evil, the latest can of beans cooked over on open fire. He was angry at nothing, everything. He apologized to Dean still shaking with fury, knowing there was no good reason for it, unable to quit. Objects had started shattering around Sam when his face was rose-red and his hands screwed up into fists. Pint glasses imploded. Pictures trembled and leapt off walls. Knives flicked across rooms, buried themselves in the floorboards.

Nothing was safe from him, and Sam swore he didn't know how he was doing it, and John had told him, "Then you figure it out, son," and so Sam had.

They weren't thinking of it as a weapon. Sam wasn't a weapon, he was a scrawny kid with double-jointed thumbs who still told all his best secrets to the horses, his face pressed against long silky necks as they grazed. It was impossible to imagine him posing any kind of threat.

Sam got it under control because that was the only reasonable thing to do, practiced it like he practiced with Colts and rifles and knives, until he could pick a tree clean of apples while lying flat on his back in the grass. Dean watched him in something like awe. He was still his bullheaded contrary little brother who loved picking fights and reading the newspaper out loud because John had never learned how, and Dean couldn't really reconcile Sam with the things he had seen his brother do.

They were able to keep Sam's abilities a secret from the rest of their underground world for a long time. John said, "They wouldn't understand," but that made it seem like the Winchesters _did_ understand, and Dean knew that wasn't true.

When Sam was nineteen a mineshaft had collapsed on his brother and he had dug him free for hours in a hysterical fugue, huge chunks of rock and wood ripped out of his way. His hands were bloody and dislocated by the time he got to Dean, but the worst damage was under his skin where his blood ran scalding hot, almost all of Sam's strength sapped away and he lingered pallidly near death for almost a week before recovering.

That was the far end of Sam's powers. He could tear through the earth itself, as long as his brother was on the other side.

He got careless with it after John's death, as with everything else, and someone saw him hold a charging werewolf at bay with an outstretched hand long enough for Dean to get a shot at it; someone else saw him drunkenly levitating bottles into the air for Dean to pick off like crystalline skeet, both of them laughing too loud, thinking they were alone.

The story traveled far ahead of them, warped and misinterpreted at every turn. Sam was unrecognizable when other people described him.

It didn't have some innately evil significance, Dean was sure, and he didn't know why everyone else insisted on seeing it that way. It was just something Sam could do, like how he could whittle and outrun almost anybody and remember all the letters in their last name. It was something he had only ever used for good, but no one cared about that.

It was maybe a year ago, down in one of those mummy-dry border towns. Sam and Dean had tried to purify a church that was infested with a nasty poltergeist, but the thing had snatched and shredded their gris-gris bags before they could get into the walls, so they'd had to burn the place to the ground. The townspeople, something less than grateful, promptly rode them out of town on a hail of buckshot and chucked stones.

Thundering away across the desert, bent down low with his hands wrenched in his girl's mane, his throat smoke-scoured and the wind drawing tears to his eyes, Dean had shouted over to Sam:

"You know when I was a kid I always thought I was gonna grow up to be a hero."

And Sam had grinned, called back, "Too late now," and spurred ahead of his brother into the dark.

(break)

Dean got them a couple hours away from Hole-in-the-Wall before making camp. He thought they might have made it back into the Dakotas but he wasn't sure. Sam mumbled and tried to help Dean get the rolls out and the fire going, but Dean just pushed him to the ground, tossed a blanket on him. Sam sprawled out long, boots scraping on the dirt, firelight playing over his features.

Dean made some coffee. He didn't think he'd sleep much. He watched his brother sleeping idly, just because there was nothing else to look at.

Sam's face was drawn, one collarbone revealed where his coat and shirt were tugged out, pressing hungrily at his skin. Sam was always about ten pounds underweight but it got worse in the winter when there wasn't as much game around. Sam didn't care about food, really. He would forget to eat for days at a time if he didn't have a brother.

Dean turned his eyes away from the visible structure of Sam's bones. He looked at the stars for awhile, thinking about the railroads.

He got Sam up a few hours later, near dawn, and made him have some cold coffee and the last of the hardtack, Sam chewing slow and resentful, mouth gluey-white and his eyes in slits even though it wasn't yet light out.

They rode into Rapid City and went to the Holy Moses, where Bobby left them messages when he was in town. Dean had two whiskies and some eggs while Sam carefully deciphered the several scraps of paper. Dean could read, he just preferred not to.

"Union-Pacific outta Omaha," Sam reported. "Bobby's been trackin' the same kinda stuff. He thinks it's probably just a couple malicious spirits infesting the rail system, and they're hopping from train to train, line to line, that's how come people are getting killed all over. Says if we can trap one it'll just take a standard cleansing."

"Aw right," Dean said with his mouth full. "So how're we supposed to know which train they'll be on next?"

Sam showed Dean the rough map Bobby had drawn. "Lookit this. The Flyer, its brand-new boiler exploded here in North Platte, three men killed, one of 'em a hunter Bobby'd set on the case. That was three weeks ago, so it's probably just about fixed by now. It won't meet a switch till Sioux Falls, so we get to it 'fore the spirit has a chance to hop another, might have a shot."

"Ain't a passenger train, right? Couldn't do shit with a buncha people watching."

"No, just freight. Just have to deal with the crew."

Dean nodded, shoved back in his chair, tipping his hat back on his head. "Fair 'nough."

He pushed the remaining swallow of whiskey over to Sam, and Sam knocked it back without looking, scowling at the map. Color bloomed faint on his cheeks, and he swiped his wrist across his mouth, pushed a hand through his hair. Sam looked distracted and frustrated and Dean thought that as soon as the job was done he was gonna take some asshole cowboy for his month's pay and buy his brother a proper bed to sleep in for a week at least.

They spent a minute in the mercantile refitting for ammunition and dry goods, until most of the money Sam had won the day before was spent. Dean planned ahead a week or so, all they could ever really count on. They had food enough, and they'd be in river country, fresh young grass for the horses.

The clerk seemed to recognize them, eyes drawing narrow and suspicious trying to get a glimpse under Sam's lowered hat brim. There were poorly drawn pictures of them up in mail posts and banks, and this happened sometimes. Dean spoke sharply, kept the man's attention on him, and they rode out with an eye to the road behind them, wary as ever of a bullet in the back.

Sioux Falls took them most of two days. The Flyer was due within the week, so they took a look around, followed the tracks east until they found a likely spot, a brief skinny ravine that opened into a yellow plain dozens of miles from the next settlement.

Sam and Dean played odds-evens for the jump and Sam lost. Dean thought it might have been intentional on his brother's part, Sam who never believed Dean when he said that his back didn't hurt, but Dean wasn't in the mood to argue, nor jump on top of a moving train, for that matter.

Scheme set, they knocked around town counting time until the Flyer came through. Dean played faro in the saloon and won them a room with a little balcony overlooking the main road, and Sam spent hours out there with his arms crossed on the rail and his chin resting, watching the people come and go.

Dean came up from the raucous party going on in the saloon one night, bringing his brother a stein of beer and one for himself. He took the other chair, propped his boots on the rail. There were flush-faced women below and a man going off to war to put them in the mood, but Dean hadn't slept in a while and he'd rather sit here with Sam and let it be for a moment.

"Anything doin'?"

Sam shook his head, his eyes tracking up and down the street slow like a muffled pendulum. "Boy almost got shot trying to steal a horse, but they run him off."

"Kids today," Dean sighed. Sam smirked.

"You remember Dad teaching us that? 'Horse thief's as low as a man can get, but just in case you need to someday.'"

"That was his wisdom on about everything," Dean answered, kinda smiling. "'You better never do, but just in case.'"

"Worked out so far."

Sam lifted his glass and Dean gave him a clink, a long sidelong look. He liked the way Sam's hat was pushed back, the way his hair was a soft dirty crash on his forehead. The gaslights below caught up murky and indistinct on his fine-drawn features, making him blurry and less sharp to the touch.

Dean blinked, rubbed at his forehead. He'd been drinking but he didn't think he was drunk, and he didn't usually let himself think on stuff like that when he wasn't drunk. He was badly confused for a second, staring dumbly at Sam's big hand curled around the rail.

"Ladies and gentlemen!"

A circus-like cry suddenly from below, making them both start. Dean dropped his glass but it was almost empty anyway, tear track of beer spilling over edge of the balcony. He and Sam craned their heads in unison, spotting a rotund small-hatted man standing on the corner, both arms upraised, drawing a small crowd.

"Boys and girls! Friends and enemies: meet the future!"

The man made a grand flourish at the odd-looking metal contraption at his side, two spoked wheels glittering, skinnier than wagon wheels and covered in what looked to be rubber.

"Future what?" someone inquired from the crowd.

"The future mode of transportation for this weary western world!"

The man beamed, rolling the metal contraption back and forth proudly. It looked impossibly rickety. Sam and Dean exchanged looks, rolled their eyes. Every week it seemed there was some new revolution, some invention that would forever alter the course of history. The Winchesters had been in the game for a very long time, and they knew the only thing that changed about history was the names.

"The horse is dead, my friends," the salesman proclaimed.

Sam nudged his elbow into Dean. "'s your horse dead, Dean?"

"Bite your tongue," Dean said immediately. He looked over to see Sam grinning, little pink bit of tongue caught in his teeth, and Dean looked away hastily, his face hot all of a sudden. He scowled down at the salesman and his weird metal thing.

"People been coming up with all these machines just so they can make useless junk faster," Dean complained, his heart not really in it.

Sam didn't answer, sensing that Dean didn't want to get into it. He rested his chin on his folded arms again, watching with a slight smirk as people tried out the metal contraption, perched and wobbling uncertainly for a few moments before overbalancing. It looked even more ridiculous than most modern things, but Dean was watching Sam.

"Tell ya," Sam said after a long peaceful while. "When we were kids I used to think there'd be an end to it someday."

Dean leaned his elbow on the rail, his hand cocked out and the inside of his wrist braced against his temple. He yawned. "What?"

Sam moved his hand, tracing something vague in the air. "All of it. Go town to town and kill whatever's evil there and move on and eventually, eventually we'd run out of towns. Eventually we'd get them all."

Dean laughed before he had a chance to think about it, and he saw flinch of hazy drunken hurt on Sam's face. Dean recoiled, swallowed hard. There was probably a right thing to say here; he could find it.

"We get as many as we can. More'n anybody else."

Sam's face stayed pinched and dissatisfied and Dean knew he was getting it wrong. He felt jammed, dust in his works, his tongue thick and stupid.

"We do as much as we can do, Sam," Dean told him, voice giving slightly and he winced, not liking the sound of it.

Nodding, downcast, Sam kept his eyes on the street. He had his mouth set small in a way that meant Dean had missed the point. Dean stared at him helplessly, jerky and irritated, wishing his brother would stop being such a goddamn mystery all the time.

They were both quiet for a long moment and Dean thought that was where the subject would die, but then Sam surprised him, asked:

"You never think about stopping?"

Dean was tired, nothing but. He'd probably be better served coming up with the lie that Sam so clearly wanted to hear, but he didn't have it in him tonight, and he told his brother, "Never," looked away so he wouldn't have to see Sam's reaction.

They kept drinking, both pretty lit by the time they wrestled out of their coats and shirts and belts, and took turns scrubbing their faces with cold water from the ewer by the door. Sam doused the lamp and they stumbled over their boots, crawling blindly into the bed.

Dean burrowed down under the sheets, squeezing his eyes shut and thinking that he couldn't see Sam so he would be okay. He didn't know why that should be, these crooked tracks his mind had found, but he could feel the heat of his brother across the few feet that separated them, and it made his breath come short.

"Hey Dean," Sam said, and Dean stiffened, muddled and uncertain. It was very dark under here.

"What?" Dean was not holding his breath. There was no good reason to be holding his breath.

"I don' mind," Sam told him all muzzy and slurred. "Long's you're around I don' mind."

And Sam's hand came searching through the linen, seeking and fumbling across Dean's face, petting his cheek and then retreating just as slow and clumsily as it had come. Dean exhaled in painstaking stages, his eyes peeled open and his cheek feeling blistered. He heard Sam sigh, and settle himself deeper into the pillow. He heard Sam's breath level out.

Dean lay there for a long time, drunk head spinning, his body crying out for rest. He could feel his heart racing and he thought that he was afraid but that didn't make any sense. Nothing made any sense, a fact irrefutably proven when Dean finally fell asleep, and all he dreamt of was bulls and bicycles.

(break)

There were a number of traditions that they held fast. The Colt, that was probably number one.

Their grandfather on their mother's side had known Samuel Colt, back when the gunmaker was fixated on creating a weapon that could kill a demon. They'd been successful, but Colt ended up losing his mind, so it couldn't really be called a happy ending.

That one Colt went from Samuel Campbell to his daughter to her husband to his eldest son. It had gone to Shiloh with John, that endless second day when nobody was whole in body or mind and the ground was a thick sucking mud made of loam and blood. John had lain in the dead pile for hours, convinced he belonged there himself. Someone dragged a stump of arm off him, tried pull the Colt out of his belt, and John had returned to the living world.

John made it home to Kansas and the girl waiting for him, the girl who had always been waiting for him. They had kept the one Colt, acquired others that maybe couldn't kill demons, but there were all kinds of righteous damage to be inflicted. Mary taught John how to fight everything she'd ever told him about, all the rituals and rites of her family, now their family, and he wasn't scared because the war had cured him of that. This was a kind of evil that he could do something about.

His beautiful ghost-slaying girl. His _wife_, beyond all reason, she'd said yes. And then five years after the president was shot, there was Dean. Dean was perfect and then there was Sam and everything was perfect.

It didn't last. John understood even at the time that it could never have lasted, wasn't the way of the world. Twenty, twenty-five years later, his boys came to their own knowing of it, another thing handed down.

Routine job, Indian ghosts with their arrows made of fire and air, and it was always more than one, always howling mobs and John had salted the mass grave, up to his hips in brittle bones and his wife covering him with a shotgun and rocksalt, wild booms shattering above everything else.

They'd done this so many times. John had been half-thinking about the boys, stashed away with Bobby in the Black Hills, as he spilled lamp oil all over the skeletons, climbed out of the grave. Mary flashed him a grin, and he loved her like crazy, lit a match. The flames licked up and John turned to watch the spirits dissolve writhing, reaching out for her and bumping her hand because she was doing the same.

They looked at each other, smiling stupid and victorious. It could have been any other night.

But the fire only took out most of them. There was at least one left, at least one buried someplace else that took advantage of that brief moment when the Winchesters had their eyes on each other instead of the peril before them. Just one, rushing out of the dark and killing Mary with a single stroke, opening her throat and she fell back into the grave, into the flames.

The scars on John's hands and arms forever after, those were from pulling her out. He passed almost everything else down to his sons, but those scars were his alone.

He buried her alongside her parents' ashes. It should have been the pyre for Mary too, but John couldn't bring himself to it. He couldn't watch it happening, see it and smell it, and he couldn't allow her to burn alone, so he put her in the ground instead and it didn't feel much better.

John carried on. There was something wrong with him now, something fractured and amiss, but he had the boys and they kept him alive for another twenty years, faintly astonishing when he had a moment to consider it.

Dean grew up charming and Sam grew up smart, both of them quick and strong, good shots, good in a fight up close, both of them able to survive off the land like soldiers. John lived to ensure that they would. The world had revealed itself to be blackhearted and lethal and his sons would at least be able to fight back.

It might not have been the life their mother wanted for them, but John believed the important things had made it down through the bloodlines. If nothing else, Sam and Dean were effortlessly dedicated to each other, this devotion that pulled them both forward and took their father aback at times. It was strange to think that he had created something so powerful, not just the boys themselves but the epic world-saving nature of their brotherhood.

He thought Mary would have liked that about her sons, at the very least.

John saw them all the way through the summer after Sam turned twenty and finally stopped growing, and then like his business on earth was complete, he got dead. It wasn't a hunt, although that was how it started.

There was a man in Creede who had sold his soul. He had wanted to be able to outdraw anybody and for ten years, so he had, as a mercenary, gunslinger for hire. It made a perverted kind of sense: already going to hell, might as well kill people for money.

His bill came due and John had exactly no qualms about using him for bait to get a chance at the crossroads demon, who'd been working on some kind of record in the area ever since they struck silver in the hills. It all went according to plan for the most part, an etched bullet between the demon's eyes as they rolled black, and if the gunslinger's throat had been torn out by the hellhounds before that happened, well, nothing was ever achieved without sacrifice.

Two months later, the gunslinger's brother had shot John in the back of the head.

John had been playing cards in a saloon at the time, holding four clubs and waiting on the fifth. He'd been thinking of another whiskey and suspecting the dealer of cheating and he heard the gunslinger's name spoken from behind him and then he was dead.

Sam and Dean weren't there. They'd gone to Denver with a pair of girls, staying in a hotel with a white-napkin restaurant, real plates and every kind of liquor you could dream of, huge beds with sheets so clean they almost felt slick. The two of them were distracted by more than the altitude, because something had happened between them one afternoon in the dizzying pour of sunlight, velvet chair and thick carpet and heat and drunk, so drunk right then and immediately afterwards, for days afterwards. They didn't get word about their father until a week after he'd been killed.

It altered them both separately, and the way they were together, too, everything kinda jarred and uneasy. Sam shied away, closed himself off until Dean missed him when they were in the same room, and he couldn't help thinking that if Sam died too, he would probably just go insane. Sam might have been thinking the same thing, and maybe that explained some of the stupid shit they did in the aftermath.

They didn't hunt down their father's murderer, didn't even try. His hands under John's shoulders, lifting his body onto the pyre, Sam had said, "Dad killed his brother," and then stopped, though it seemed like he wanted to say more, he just stopped dead and his eyes went far away for a moment, a shadow passing.

Dean had his father's legs, his oddly bare feet because there was no sense burning a good pair of boots. Dean was crying but not in any serious way. He didn't answer Sam and they didn't talk about it after that.

Dean took possession of the Colt and his father's best coat, and they split up most of the other stuff. They never went back to Denver, no matter what the job, never set foot again. Sam kept getting drunk and saying, "You an' me, boy, you an' me," like an incantation, a favorite verse.

They carried on.

(break)

The day of the Flyer began ill-favored, heavy gray cloud cover and a wicked bite in the air, and they rode out eyeing the sky, daring the rain. Dean had apples and cold pancakes wrapped in cloth and he shared them out with his brother. They paused the horses to chuck their cores and Sam's went farther; Sam's usually went farther.

By the time they got to the ravine, the sun was fighting its way through, pinpoint shafts of light here and there across the plains, and Dean was feeling better about the whole operation.

They split up, Sam taking up his position above the tracks and Dean taking both their horses farther down into the open land. Dean wanted to remind Sam to watch his landing on the narrow top of the train, but Sam would just get all huffy, so he restrained himself to saying, "Be careful," and didn't look back more than twice.

Dean heard the train long before he saw it. He swung down from his horse and knelt by the tracks, laid his cheek on the rail and felt it buzzing and ringing. He paced up and down the metal until he could feel the vibrations through the soles of his boots, and got himself out of the way, wishing the angles were such that he could see Sam and make sure he'd nailed the goddamn landing.

The train appeared, steam and smoke and clatter, already slowing, and Dean could see Sam hanging out the side, scanning for him and Dean raised his arm, hat in hand. He led the horses, nickering, followed the train to its eventual stop a couple hundred feet on.

Sam climbed out of the cab to meet him, dragging the brakeman by his collar like a recalcitrant child. Sam had him held absently at gunpoint, most of his attention on Dean.

"There's another two in there and they got three other railroad men just hitchin' a ride," Sam reported. "Crew's disarmed."

Dean nodded, started to ask where the others were, but then a man in engineer blues leapt out of the cab, a length of iron in his hand already swinging for Sam's head. Dean cried out, drew and fired without conscious thought, bullet punching into the engineer's overalls and knocking him back but he didn't fall. He staggered back but then he kept coming, his arm rising again.

Sam whirled, the brakeman in front of him as a shield and his gun pressed to the man's head, but it didn't stop the engineer, who had three of Dean's bullets in his chest now but kept coming. Sam and Dean both saw the moment his eyes flipped to pure shiny black, and they both shouted, fell back. Sam shoved the brakeman away, reached for his brother.

Dean shot the engineer again but it was just panic. He didn't have the right Colt in his hand right now; they hadn't once thought it could be demons.

"Hold him, Sam, are you holding him," Dean said in a near-shriek, scrambling onto his horse with his hands feeling stupid and numb.

"Trying," Sam hollered back, and then, "Fuck," his voice breaking, and Dean looked over frantically, saw another man come out of the cab to join the engineer and brakeman and Sam was swinging onto his horse, shouting, "All of them, it's in all of them."

Dean jammed his heels down, tore his throat rallying his girl. From behind him he swore he could hear the rotted-wood voice of one of the demons saying, "_Winchester_," a fresh burst of baffled fright spearing through him. They set off galloping across the plains, and Sam wrenched backwards every few seconds to batter the demons with his mind, shoving them back, pinning them momentarily to the ground. Every time, Sam groaned at the effort, something ripped out of him.

They were flying, pounding, and Dean cast a terrified glance over his shoulder, saw the possessed men running for the horse cars.

"They're coming after us," Dean shouted uselessly, and looked to find his brother bent over in pain, clutching his horse's mane in one hand and his head in the other. He was fading back, losing ground, and Dean's stomach bottomed out. "Stop, Sam!" He was screaming, it hurt like coughing blood. "Ride, just ride!"

Sam pushed himself up, snarled at Dean with his eyes glassy, his hands tightening on the reins. He looked manic and desperate, his own evil twin, but he lashed at his horse's neck, stood in the saddle. Sam came up even with Dean, fierce new color on his face as if through sheer force of will. The wind slammed, the ground shook, and they were going so fast.

Behind them were six demons riding in perfect formation.

(break)

They rode flat out, heading west and north into the empty country. Dean wasn't aware of anything except his horse's smooth ebony flanks churning beneath him, his brother in his peripheral vision, the maddening wind. His lungs felt full of dust.

The plains gave way to rougher terrain, trees for cover and streams that they could follow, trusting the current to erase their tracks. They were a couple hours out now, the horses beginning to struggle from the pace, their sides bellowing out. Dean cajoled his girl, his voice raspy and unnatural, and they staggered up the hill, small rocks clattering down in their wake.

They broke into a clearing, a shelf on the steepening slope with a wide view of the valley, and without needing to discuss it they both swung off their horses, crouched together with their eyes tracking across the still land.

"How much of a head start you figure we got?" Dean asked, breath whistling. "Half a mile at least, right? And nobody outrides us on a short stretch, so they're a couple miles back and that gets us to the river."

Sam didn't answer, his face intent. Dean swallowed past a gritty feeling in his throat, staring out at the valley in a low-key state of terror.

"I think we lost 'em," Dean said, twisting one hand in Sam's coat. "Do you think we lost 'em?"

"No."

Dean smiled for some reason. "Neither do I."

They stood up, went back to the horses. Dean leaned on his girl's side, murmuring apologies and promising it would be over soon. Sam pushed at his shoulder with a canteen, saying, "Drink."

The water tasted mossy and old but Dean didn't care. He drank until he was gasping, passed the canteen to Sam and took off his hat, slapping it against his leg to get rid of the worst of the dust. Sam smirked at him, scrubbed a hand through Dean's hair and Dean squeezed his eyes shut against the cloud filtering down.

They swung back onto their horses, continued their push for higher ground.

(break)

The sun began to set. It had been the better part of a day, miles and miles and they had gone past sore to numb to sore again. They didn't talk, needing the breath.

The land had turned rocky and bristling with scrub brush sharp enough to tear through denim. Dean rode in front, no idea where they were or where they were going, but breaking a trail for his brother, at least. He could hear Sam coughing behind him, that rattling wrack of a cough that showed him to be worn down to the quick.

They broke another small rise, a natural pool sunk in the rock, and it was almost too dark to see, and Dean hit a wall, suddenly couldn't handle another moment in the saddle.

He swung down, and his legs didn't hold, pitching him onto his knees. Pain jarred through him, abrupt and stirring.

"Dean!"

Dean heard Sam's boots hitting the ground, lifted his hand. "I'm all right, 'm fine, I just." He forced his head up. "Sweet Jesus, I'm tired."

Sam laughed rough, standing over Dean and offering him a hand up. Dean held his brother, swaying and catching his balance, and Sam was tall as a tree, rooted and strong. Dean's head was spinning. He pushed off, staggered and dropped to his knees again at the shallow pool, plunging his face into the water.

He stayed under until his thoughts fell into linear order again, pulled up hauling in breath and streaming, shaking his head like a dog. Sam knelt beside him, scooping water into his hat and pouring it over his head, the back of his neck. They became unevenly clean, smears of mud and dirt arrayed on their faces and necks.

"No way they're still after us, right?" Dean said. He watched Sam drinking from cupped hands, swiping his arm across his mouth. "Haven't seen hide nor hair for hours now."

Sam shrugged, didn't answer. Dean fidgeted, his eyes stuck for some reason on the damp curls of hair clinging to Sam's forehead and around his ears, thinking about sliding his fingers through for a split second before he banished the thought.

"Listen," Dean said hastily. "We find a town, right? Hole up for the night, get some food and maybe some sleep and then we can backtrack tomorrow, get behind them."

Sam shook his head, pushed onto his feet. He went over to the ridge, and Dean followed, whipping loose water off his hands.

"We can't bring half a dozen demons looking for blood into a town. There'd be a massacre," Sam said, eyes working over the land, darkening in long stretches of violet and slate.

"Why're they after us, anyway?" Dean asked for the first time even though he felt like he'd been saying it all day, his voice edging into a whine. He was so tired.

Sam shrugged and sighed, put a companionable hand on the back of Dean's neck. "People hardly seem to need a reason, these days."

Dean looked over at him, half a smile on his face, and he caught Sam staring, heavy-eyed and soft-mouthed and nothing like how a man should look at his brother. Dean skipped a breath, going tense under Sam's hand. A flash, _Denver_, Sam on his knees on the carpet and both hands holding Dean's face, and then Sam's expression went stricken and he let Dean go, stepped away jerkily.

Dean croaked, "Sam," but Sam had turned away, going back to the horses and pretending like he hadn't heard.

After a minute, Dean followed, keeping his mouth shut. Sam wouldn't look at him, his face averted, hat pulled down low. Dean dragged his eyes off the angle of his brother's jaw, casting his gaze instead to the rising moon.

(break)

The world hardened by night, petrified, and they rode across solid rock for a long time, until the thunder of the hoofbeats had Dean's ears ringing high and off-key. They made it into the mountains, brutally sheer land and the horses were dying. Forced ahead until they found a stream and a lookout, and then they staked out a place among the stones.

They watched for some interminable span, not speaking. Sam was hunched up in his coat, shoulders protectively high. Dean chewed on a toothpick, his stomach grumbling fiercely. There was a little bit of jerky left and a biscuit half-eaten by pale green mold, couldn't even have coffee because they wouldn't risk a fire. Dean was cold, plainly miserable.

The silence was killing him. "How long you figure we been watchin'?"

Sam didn't so much as twitch. "Awhile."

"How much longer before you figure they're not after us?"

"While longer."

Dean gave him a slanted look, wishing Sam would just smirk or something, break that stiff mask. Rubbing at his face, Dean yawned. He had no sense of time passing anymore, dawn somewhere in the amorphous future.

It was too quiet, always too quiet, and so Dean started talking.

"We ain't rode so much since that summer in Mexico, you remember that? That goddamn chupacabra pack, there's a miserable thing to hunt. You kill one just in time for another four to be born, like goddamn Irish rabbits is what they are-"

"_Hey_," Sam said sharply.

Dean snapped his eyes forward, teeth clenching on the pick. Way down in the valley, four or five miles back, there was a twist of light, snaking and moving almost imperceptibly. Dean's blood froze, sticking under his skin.

"Torches, you think?" he asked in a whisper, as if the posse might overhear.

"Maybe. Maybe lanterns."

Dean stared helplessly. "That's our trail they're following."

"Dead on it."

"I couldn't do that. Could you do that? How can they do that?"

"Demons," Sam replied simply. Dean sneered, a lowering curl of panic struggling in his chest.

"Goddamn motherfucking _demons_," he spat. He and Sam latched onto forearms and with twin groans, they pulled each other up, went to wake the horses.

(break)


	2. Chapter 2

Two days later, they were still running.

Dean had gone through a state of bizarre catatonic hysteria all through the length of their third afternoon out there. He couldn't speak to Sam and he couldn't think of him, for some reason his mind kept veering away, darting and dodging. Dean got confused, and he thought that maybe Sam had very recently died and this was self-preservation, it was that insanity thing again, and then his thoughts fuzzed out again and he forgot he had a brother.

He forgot other things too, vast chunks of experience lifted away from him. There was no such thing as civilization, no saloons or brothels or libraries, no tax clerks or baseball players, no cities or photographs or bicycles. Only the frontier, the drummed land beneath his horse beneath him, stretching out all around colored like rust and clay and breathing heat. Dean had never been anywhere else, never done anything but ride, his body dense as slag, this terrible burden he had to carry.

Sam broke him out of his trance by throwing the canteen into his back. Dean came back to himself, dread and despair rising up hard but he grabbed hold, hurled them down. They'd been in worse fixes. Dean pulled his defenses together and sneered at his brother, his priorities falling back into place.

They caught glimpses of the demon posse from time to time. The six were always moving at the same rate, implacable and almost unhurried. They had all the time in the world to hunt down the Winchester brothers; it was still a thousand miles to the ocean.

Over the course of the two days, Dean thought the posse might have closed about two miles of the gap. Sam and Dean were slowing, pushing as hard as they could but slowing all the same.

The sun went down again. Dean watched it happening and it was like his heart was breaking, a cratering feeling in his chest and he would have given anything to keep night from falling. And then it seemed so unfair, such a hopeless thing to wish so intently for, and Dean could have almost wept from the frustration.

"Sam," he tried to call out, but it wasn't really working, and he coughed, cleared his throat. "Sammy."

It was close to full dark now, and Dean heard more than saw Sam ride up beside him. "Y'all right?"

Dean shook his head. "Askin' a stupid question."

"What is it?"

"We, we gotta do something." His voice cracked hard, and Dean winced. "Can't keep this up much longer."

Sam, mostly a shadow beside him, nodded. He sounded worse than Dean felt, and that was almost unthinkable.

"Been thinkin' on it," Sam said. "Thinkin', we let one of the horses go and ride double up to some cover, get 'em to split up and then we take out the ones that follow. We can take out three, right?"

"Colt's got four bullets in it," Dean told him, though of course Sam knew; they both always knew. "How long before the moon's right to make some more?"

"Six and a half years," Sam replied dutifully, and Dean heard him hawk and spit. "I ain't countin' on living that long, at this rate."

Dean bared his teeth at nothing, not liking it when Sam got fatalistic. "I'm 'bout ready to trade all four for a goddamn can of beans; let's try your stupid plan."

Sam punched his arm, then spurred ahead, searching the dark for a good ambush spot. Dean was honestly kinda dizzy from hunger and exhaustion, and he locked on his brother, the minute gleam of his metal in the moonlight, the steady rasp of Sam's breath barely audible over the hoofbeats.

Sam's mount would be the one to go riderless; they didn't even have to discuss that. Dean rode close, listening to Sam whisper apologies to his horse, promise to come find him if at all possible, and Dean didn't make fun because it wasn't like they had a lot of other opportunities for friendship out here.

Sam jumped between horses while they were both moving fast; probably no one else could have executed the transfer as seamlessly in the dark. Dean held his breath, felt his brother slam into his back, jolting him forward in the saddle as Sam clung to him, caught his balance. Dean exhaled, turning his head to watch Sam's horse peeling off from their trail, racing off into the black.

"This'll work," Sam shouted from behind him, his chin wedged into Dean's shoulder and his chest flat to Dean's back. He had his hands fisted in Dean's coat at his hips, and Dean suddenly couldn't remember it ever being cold.

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and led them on.

(break)

They got up above the trail and took cover. Dean had the Colt, itching to check the bullets over and over again but he restrained himself. His energies had picked up with the formulation of a plan, adrenaline matched up with debilitating fatigue and it made his vision sparkly at the edges, his mouth tasting of copper.

Far below them, the posse's chain of lights steadily advanced. There was something almost industrial about it, a machine created solely to track and kill. Dean was almost grudgingly impressed, caught himself wondering what it'd be like to ride with them. His mind kept stumbling hazardously into ill-lit corners best left unexplored, and he tried to focus on Sam, hard against his back.

"It's hardly a fair chase," Dean said, spinning the Colt's chamber restlessly. "They don't get tired, they don't get hungry. We're faster, we coulda shook 'em two days ago if they were playing by the rules."

"Rules?" Sam made a sound half-chuckle half-cough, pressed his fists in at Dean's sides. "In a knife fight? No rules."

Dean surprised himself by snorting. Their dad used to say that sometimes, because ghosts and werewolves and monsters all had defined ways that they could be killed, there were always _rules_, but people were a different story.

Demons, too.

They couldn't use the Colt very often, not only because the scarcity of bullets meant every shot had to be true, but because their father had taught them the only thing better than a weapon like that was your enemies not knowing you had it. The demons knew the Colt existed but they didn't know whose family held it safe, and Dean was already thinking through how they were going to cover their tracks after this little massacre, knowing Sam was thinking on the same.

"They oughta be coming up to it," Sam said, and he was somehow closer than Dean had expected, shocking warm breath right at his ear and Dean shivered. Sam felt it, went still, and then they both ignored it.

"Is. Is this the best spot?" Dean asked, almost completely normal-sounding. "Should we be higher up?"

"It's good enough," Sam answered, muffled and Dean felt Sam bite his shoulder through his coat, making a hoarse cut-off sound and Dean jerked, but then Sam was saying, "_There_," and he let his eyes refocus on the trail, where the posse's lights were splitting into two groups.

"It's working," Dean said, sounding a little surprised to his own ears, and elbowed his brother back. He needed to catch his breath, get ready.

He checked the bullets in the Colt, unable to help it, tipped the gun up into the broken moonlight. Four bullets and six years before they could make some more; if God was on their side they'd manage an exorcism or two, if Sam's power could hold them long enough.

"Fuck," Sam said too loud, hands dragging on Dean's coat.

Dean snapped his head up, watched with slow-growing horror as the posse lights melted back together, turning from the false trail and coalescing back into that inexorable formation. For a second it was quiet enough that Dean swore he could hear the barrage of hoof falls, echoing clear as a bell in his empty mind.

"They're not going for it," Sam said, and Dean growled, "You _think_?" and then Sam slid his arms around Dean's waist, a gasp pressed out of him as Sam leaned in close to hiss, "_Ride_."

It was all Dean ever did anymore.

(break)

They got through the night, through the mountain pass that Dean was sure was going to dead-end on them, through the meteor shower on the high plains that threatened to strike them blind, all the way through to a dawn that broke so soft and pretty Dean wished he could shoot it.

Sam was mostly non-responsive, crashed on his brother's back heavy as a coat of mail, arms still wound around his waist and Dean was allowing it because maybe at least one of them could get some rest that way. Sam wasn't really asleep, not longer than five minutes at a stretch before Dean felt him snag, jolt upright before sagging back. Sam buried his face in Dean's shoulder, deep rumbling moan.

Dean had narrowed down and become elemental, the killing straits of the world brashly revealed. They were out of water. They hadn't eaten in two days. They were riding his girl to death, her eyes rolling back white and dry and desperate, and she wasn't even breaking a sweat anymore. Dean couldn't worry about how the fuck they were going to get out of this one; he needed to find them some water.

They were in high country, if Dean had to guess he would have said Montana but the specifics weren't of any importance. The sky was pink as a girl's ribbon, thin thready clouds in shallow arches, the land purple and gray and shaped like artwork and it was beautiful. They were going to die out here but at least it was beautiful.

"Dean," Sam mumbled into his shoulder. Dean wasn't sure Sam was fully conscious, so he didn't respond, but Sam tightened his arms around Dean's waist, said, "Hey Dean."

"What, man?"

"You know why?"

Dean shook his head, shrugging to feel Sam's chin jostle and come to rest again. "What?"

"This. Them." Sam pressed his forehead down and his hair rustled on Dean's neck, rough and gritty and Dean's stomach flipped over slow. "Know why they're after us?"

"Sammy-" Dean started to say, choked, but Sam didn't let him.

"It's Denver," Sam told him, voice shaky and so close. Dean shuddered, felt it run through his brother and back into him, shaking his head automatically. "Hunting us down because, because-"

"No," Dean broke in, urgently sure that he couldn't let Sam speak it aloud, something terrible would happen, something even more terrible than everything else that was happening. "We, we didn't mean to, we never did anything."

"They can see it in us," Sam whispered, and Dean could feel his mouth moving against his shirt collar, his breath on Dean's neck. "See it in our souls."

Dean kept shaking his head, squeezing his eyes shut. Sam was all around him, legs bracketing his and one hand open on Dean's stomach and the point of his nose brushing Dean's throat. Dean could hardly breathe.

"It doesn't work like that," he managed.

Sam kissed the place where his jaw met his throat, reckless and hot with a promise of teeth, but quick, too quick and then gone, sinking away from his brother, shifting his hands back to Dean's hips. Dean was motionless, scared stiff, and Sam told him, sounding pained:

"You don't know how it works."

(break)

What had happened in Denver the day their father was murdered, what had happened was that Sam and Dean had gotten drunk.

There was nothing unusual about that; they'd been getting drunk together since Sam was thirteen years old. But it was different because they'd been raised on home brew and rotgut made of raw alcohol, burnt sugar, and chewing tobacco, and the bar at the Denver hotel had everything else. They came to an early agreement that they would try every bottle, stayed loaded for days on end.

They were flush from a string of paid jobs, mostly homesteader stuff, ridding the land of curses and whatnot, and Dean won enough money gambling the first night that they could have stayed a month. It was all going really well.

Then one afternoon the girls they were with left them to go dress shopping. Sam and Dean were in the casino in their best suits; it might have been a Sunday. It wasn't even two o'clock yet and Sam was already grinning dumbly and making idiot bets, his eyes glazed and his hair dark with sweat. Dean took him up to the room for his own good, laughing so hard at Sam's befuddled expressions that he almost couldn't get the key to work.

Dean was pretty drunk himself, tripping over his feet and the unnaturally thick carpet, ash-colored and vaguely unstable but that might have just been his equilibrium, shot like a cattle rustler. He barely made it to the fancy velvet chair by the window, collapsing and still kind of laughing. Sam was still grinning, calling Dean names as he stripped out of his coat and vest, whipping his dusty hat for his brother to bat down.

It had come about so strangely, such an odd angle. Sam had stood over him, kicking at Dean's boots and flicking his cuffs open, and a button had snapped off, disappeared into the carpet. Sam had dropped to his knees to look for it, combing his fingers through, and Dean was looking at him, Sam on the floor in his crisp snow-white shirt and the golden spill of sunlight, his curved mouth and high cheekbones, the mess of Sam's hair washed with soap for the first time in months a couple days ago, falling weighted and thick and smooth over his forehead.

Dean was looking at him, no reason for it other than that he was almost always looking at Sam, and the warm laughing feeling in his stomach solidified, tightened, coiled hot. Dean was confused, idly frightened, but mostly so drunk.

Sam went to straighten and he was going to rack his head on the little table so Dean reached out, wove his hand in Sam's hair and pulled him free.

And then Sam turned up to him, his eyes wide and his mouth open and soft and Dean didn't think, this crazy buzzing thing happening in his mind as he sat up and kissed Sam hard.

Sam came at him like he was dying for it. He reared up on his knees, one huge hand wrapping around the back of Dean's head, Sam's thumb nudging at his jaw. Swiftly, immediately, in the space of a breath they were open to each other, kissing deep and fast and greedy, pressed together white-knuckled.

Dean had a hand lost in Sam's hair and a hand shoved up his shirt, skidding over the slick skin of his back, and Sam was leaning over him, pulling at Dean's hips and mouthing across his face. Dean was struggling for air, too hot to speak or breathe, the sunlight drenching and the flat of Sam's palm rubbing his thigh, long fingers hooking, tugging at his fly.

And Dean would have let him, let him take it as far as he wanted, whatever he wanted. One thing he'd never doubted once he'd sobered up was that he would have let Sam do anything in that moment.

But instead the girls had come back, rustling and chattering in their bright voices, and Sam had wrenched himself away from Dean, fell back on his hands on the carpet gaping at his brother with this godawful look of petrified shock. Dean could see how Sam's mouth was red and swollen now, how his eyes were almost black. It had taken more strength than he'd known himself to possess, staying in the chair.

Sam had scrambled to his feet, his face gone a furious cherried color, and he'd rushed to the girls, leaving Dean staring at the spot where he could see the carpet giving up the shape of Sam's knees.

That was what had happened in Denver.

It didn't have anything to do with their father dying alone in a saloon a couple hours later. It didn't have anything to do with the demons after them now.

Dean knew that they'd be suffer for it, and dearly, but he had to believe that it wouldn't happen in this life.

(break)

The sun was as high as it was going to get in the sky, and they had to let Dean's girl go.

They were back in the mountains again, the angle of incline forced steeper until she was staggering back every three steps, whistling and whining with the corners of her mouth chafed bloody from the bridle. Dean could feel her trembling beneath them, his own body shaking in sympathy.

They had to let her go. Dean was weeping as they climbed off, and even though they didn't have the time to spare he unbuckled the saddle with his face pressed to her neck, shoved it off her back to let her run completely unburdened. Sam pretended like he couldn't see and Dean pretended like it wasn't happening.

She tried to follow, stumbling and halfhearted, and he didn't have voice to holler her away and so Sam did it for him. Then Sam grabbed Dean by the collar and got him running himself.

Dean's legs didn't want to work, wavering under him and cramping, but he had to keep moving, he had to keep up with Sam. Sam was crashing through the brush, almost losing his footing on the loose ground. He looked back for Dean over his shoulder, snatching glances feverishly, his mouth panting and at some point he'd lost his hat.

Dean fell. The world gave out under his boots and slammed him down, slicing his hands on small sharp rocks, his wind gone. His ears were ringing but he could faintly hear Sam saying his name, then shouting it.

Dean was just going to lie here for a minute, facedown on the rough ground with dirt in his mouth and blood on his palms. His heart was beating so fast, making his chest hiccup and rattle against the earth.

Sam turned him onto his back, pressed his hands to Dean's face and hunched down over him. Sam tried to wipe the dirt away but his hands were no better and Dean wanted to laugh at him but he didn't have the wind for it. Sam looked so scared, seven years old again all of a sudden and spending days at Dean's bedside waiting to see if he'd die of snakebite, and Dean fisted a hand in Sam's coat, gave him a shake.

"'m all right," he mumbled.

It was supposed to make Sam feel better, but instead his face collapsed in gradual stages, the line of his eyebrows breaking and then his eyes darkening with despair, his jaw going slack and frail. Sam crumpled, curled down over Dean, burying his face in his throat.

Dean coughed weakly, feeling like he'd been kicked in the chest. His hand went to Sam's head instinctively, fingers working through his hair and Sam let out a shuddering breath, scalding across Dean's skin.

"We're gonna die, aren't we," Sam said, muffled.

Dean's hand closed into a fist. He dragged Sam's head up, too hard and Sam cried out a little, his eyes thinned but sharp on Dean's, glittering with exhaustion and pain.

"No," Dean told him, his voice stronger than it had been in days. Certainty bloomed in him suddenly, out of nowhere. They could run them to the ends of the earth; no more Winchesters were getting killed on his watch.

Dean shoved up, pushed his mouth against Sam's and kissed him fierce and sure, said against his lips, "_No_, goddamn it."

Then he hauled himself to his feet, got hold of his brother and kept going.

(break)

They were climbing hand over hand up the rocks, digging their fingers and boot tips into crevices, losing fingernails and layers of skin. There were little shoots of vibrant green poking out of the stones, lizards with black and yellow diamond patterns on their backs skittering up the walls as they clambered near.

Dean's lungs felt punctured, only half-inflating. He kept breathing in dust, hardly able to tell it from the air. He kept his eyes on Sam, the sparks of his spurs flinting off rock.

They could see the posse all the time now. The six were maybe half a mile back, probably less, and they still had their horses.

Dean stared at his brother's back, kept repeating in his mind, _not gonna die, not gonna die_, like he could think it true.

They broke into a clearing and for a second Dean's hopes pricked because there was blue sky and flat ground and maybe, maybe a corkscrewing path shrouded from view, a way _out_, but then Sam was shouting, "Damn it!" because the land went absolutely nowhere; they were standing at the edge of a cliff.

It was a hundred feet high. Way down below a white-boiling river cut its way through a narrow canyon, dotted with vicious-looking rocks.

Sam spun on Dean, eyes blazing and frantic, something snapping like a bone. "We, we can't-"

"_Hey_," Dean said, gripping his brother's forearms. "Stay with me, Sam, we gotta, we, we gotta-"

It hit him suddenly and his mouth fell open in shock, staring at his brother.

"We gotta jump," Dean told him, sounding kinda amazed.

"_What_?" Sam was practically screaming, the madness of the chase catching up and wrecking down on him, his face bright red. Dean shook his head, casting fearful glances back over his shoulder.

"We gotta, man, and we gotta do it right now before they catch up." Dean tried to pull Sam over to the cliff but Sam wasn't having it, his heels dug in. "We jump without them seeing, and the water's deep enough we don't get squished to death, then we lose 'em, Sammy, they won't have the first fuckin' clue, come _on_."

"Are you crazy!" Sam ripped away from Dean, flattened himself against the rock wall. "The fall'll probably kill you!"

"Better the fall than fucking demons," Dean shouted back. He shoved his brother into the rock, drilled his fists into Sam's chest and leaned close. "I told you we're not gonna die, and you're gonna listen to me for once in your goddamn life."

Sam stared at him for a moment, hollow-eyed and dazy with panic. His hands were in the bends of Dean's elbows, bearing down hard. His throat ducked as he swallowed, and Dean saw the determination set in Sam's eyes, his jaw tightening. Sam nodded, curt and jerky.

Dean stepped back. He shed his coat and tied the Colt to his belt with his handkerchief, tucked inside his shirt, and then unbuckled his gun belt, ditched his other metal, Sam following suit. They watched each other, eyes locked and hands moving fast. Dean's breath was drawing ragged, wondering if he'd maybe gone crazy hundreds of miles ago, if he was maybe about to get them both crushed and drowned and killed.

Dean offered his brother one end of the empty gun belt with a little grin, and he wasn't surprised when Sam took it and pulled him close, kissed him on the mouth, hot open press that Dean was starting to know by heart, and he kissed back pretty sure that this was the last time.

They each wrapped a hand in the leather strap, bound together, and ran for the edge of the cliff, leaping high and far and Sam was howling, one clarion soaring note and then they were falling a very long way, plummeting through the open air. Dean had just enough time to feel bad about lying to Sam when he said they weren't going to die, terror gone deeper in him that ever before, and then he exploded into the water.

He shot to the bottom, pinned by his boots, and the current gripped him tight, flung him swirling through the rapids. Dean broke the surface gasping, trying to drink and breathe and swim all at once, and he ricocheted off a rock, realized he was no longer holding onto the gun belt.

"Sam!" Dean screamed. He was pulled under by the current, half-drowned before he came up sputtering, hoarsely trying to call his brother's name.

If Sam was dead then Dean would be dead directly after, the demons' work done for them. All this would have been for naught, all the years and miles and blood Dean had given to keep his brother safe, every promise he had ever made. Dean's clothes and boots began to drag him down like a kelpie, and he allowed it, gave himself over to it and was towed under, too tired to fight anymore.

Sam hauled him up, back into the air and the sunlight. Sam was laughing, open-mouthed and kinda delirious but Dean could hardly blame him. He clung to his brother, forgetting how to swim, conscious of nothing but Sam and the river, bearing them cleanly away.

(break)

The river took them down out of the mountains, fetched up at the outskirts of a broad adobe-colored stretch of ranch land. Dean could have fallen where he stood and sleep for three days, but they had to put more distance between them and the demons. They weren't being followed anymore but Dean couldn't stop checking their trail.

They ran a few miles, until their clothes dried stiff and were sweat through again. There was a persistent fiery lance in Dean's side, his back seizing up on him. Sam was ahead, long legs eating up the land.

They came upon the ranch house, the barn and livestock pens, and with absolutely no remorse Dean jammed open the latch of the chicken coop, stole a bird right off her nest and broke her neck before even getting outside. They sprinted for the tree line, the hair on the back of Dean's neck standing straight up waiting for the coarse outraged shout, the eruption of a shotgun aimed at their backs.

But luck was with them again, at last. They got under cover and Dean fixed the bird with his knife, which had rather miraculously survived the whole ordeal, while Sam got a fire going. They roasted pieces on sticks and their hands were shaking, both of them faint with hunger. They ate savagely, like kings.

Somewhat revived, the silvery sparkles gone from the edges of his vision, Dean and his brother staggered into the small town, both of them looking like they'd been drug behind a train, which wasn't too far from the truth. There was a church and a mail post and a saloon and Dean could have cried with relief. Everything still existed.

There was a roulette wheel in one corner of the saloon and Dean was endlessly thankful, not at all confident in his ability to beat anyone at cards right this second. Instead he got to slump at the bar and watch Sam glare at the dancing white ball, his fingers twitching against his legs. Sam won three times in a row, about the limit for a stranger who didn't want to get the shit kicked out of him later, and then they had some whiskey, Sam licking at the lip of the glass like it was candy.

Dean was almost all the way back to normal by then. Still hadn't slept in a few days, but that wasn't anything new.

He struck up with the barkeep and learned that they were in Idaho, which was apparently a state now and had been for eight years, to Dean's considerable surprise. The Union was just letting in anybody these days.

Sam was lingering ever-so-slightly too close, heavy awareness at Dean's back and his elbow bumping Sam's chest every time he shifted. Dean didn't say anything, didn't wonder if it looked odd to the other men. His mind was clicking and whirring, kept snagging back to Sam's mouth on his, that perfect fit.

Dean settled down at the faro table and played until he'd won them a horse and two new hats. They stuffed their pockets with food and rode all night, one more night, easy and unpursued, and Sam's arms were around him the whole time, Sam's cheek on Dean's shoulder, breathing steady and even and asleep.

Dean loved him so much it seemed dangerous, unwieldy. He saw the sun rise, for some completely irrational reason feeling blessed.

They made it into Green River and Dean was slurring, his sentences fractured and inverted, and Sam made him stop in the shadow of Castle Rock. Dean barely waited for Sam to get the blanket spread out before collapsing on it, already asleep before he hit the ground.

He dreamt that they were still being chased. The skew and illogic of a nightmare world couldn't make it worse than it had been, even when the flesh melted off his horse and they were riding on bones like the Apocalypse.

Dean woke up with a start. It was dark out now and Sam had a little fire crackling, sitting cross-legged champing on a hank of jerky. Dean watched him for a moment through his lowered eyelashes, Sam's distant thoughtful expression, head tipped back to study the stars.

Sam was magic, Dean thought foggily. Not cursed, nor tainted. There was no kind of corruption here, none of the slaughter and mercilessness of the range, just white light, grace made purely visible. If the world was inherently wicked then Sam was otherworldly; he was the balance of good. Dean smiled, a deep quiet burn inside. He didn't care if he went to hell for it. Sam was the only one for him.

Sam looked down at him and smiled back. Dean pushed himself up, his skin feeling jittery and too tight. Pleasant fuzz still in his mind, his body aching almost everywhere but it was okay, he'd slept and he was okay.

Knocking his brother on the shoulder, Sam offered him a biscuit, said, "We're at least a week from Bobby's, 'specially if we try to double-back it the whole way."

Dean's back spiked with pain at the very idea. He shook his head, mouth full of biscuit.

"What, last week wasn't enough fun for you?" he said. "We're holin' up, brother, not goin' anywhere till we've recovered."

Sam tipped his head to the side, smirk twisting the corner of his mouth. "You're always gonna be bowlegged, man, just make your peace already."

Dean smacked him, whapping his hat off his head, and Sam didn't try to duck away. He swayed closer instead, leaned into his brother. Dean let him, feeling Sam's shoulder notched into his own, bracing against him. He sighed, and Sam echoed it, both of them watching the fire, not looking at each other.

After a long moment of quiet, Sam asked hesitantly, "Hey Dean?"

"Yeah."

"I, um. Well." Sam fidgeted, rubbed his hand on his knee. "Y'know."

Dean pulled off his hat, scratched at his head, coughing. His heart felt wrung out, squeezed down small. "Yeah."

Quiet again, and then Sam telling him, "It wasn't just 'cause I thought we were gonna die."

"I know."

"I mean, I still, I _always_-"

"I know, Sam," Dean said, words sticking and clotting in his throat. He stared down at the unfamiliar hat in his hands, bending and worrying the brim. Slow curling thing happening in his stomach again, brought on by the unsure timber of Sam's voice and the solid press of his shoulder, this sneaking rush of anticipation growing in him like the shadow of a tidal wave.

"Dean-" Sam started to say, and then stopped, sucked in a breath and Dean crossed his fingers, bit the inside of his lip as Sam said all broken up and fearful, "Do you, did you still-"

Dean couldn't listen to him, couldn't bear it one second longer, and he turned on his brother, reaching clumsy and stupid-fast and jamming his finger on Sam's cheek, pulling Sam's face to his with no finesse, no skill at all. Sam moaned into his mouth at once, slung an arm around Dean's shoulders and tried to drag him over and their teeth clacked and they toppled, narrowly missing the fire.

Dean rolled them over and got Sam pinned beneath him, gasping hard and feeling crazed already, desperate. Sam blinked up at him, face lit up with astonishment, hands clutching Dean's shirt. Dean had to stop for a second, just breathe.

He went to touch Sam's face but then his hand hung up, caught in tremors. Dean couldn't really believe it, not the length of Sam's body twining beneath him or Sam's bitten mouth or Sam craning up against his hold, none of it. This was a hallucination brought on by the hundreds of miles behind them, that hundred-foot fall, and Sam was made of crystal or smoke or something impossible like that. Dean was scared to touch him, almost shy suddenly, his eyes cracking into his brother's.

"'s okay," Sam whispered, seeing the doubt in Dean's face because Dean could never hide anything from him. Sam tugged at Dean's collar, licked his lips. "Nobody knows but me and I want you to, swear to God I do."

Sam's hands so heavy and sure on his collar, the back of his neck, and Dean was drawn down irresistibly, opening his mouth against his brother's and sinking into him.

Dean learned some new stuff that night. Sam liked Dean's hands in his hair, wanted to be guided and led, brought back to Dean's mouth again and again. Sam liked it when Dean held him in place, forcing his leg over his brother's, elbows on his chest as Sam bucked and rolled his hips, trying to get away only so that Dean would keep him from getting away.

He learned that they fought for it, every moment of it, Dean sucking on Sam's neck until he shuddered and lost speech, and Sam's hands slid inside Dean's pants, under his smalls, rough fingers on the curves of Dean's hips and his palms set to the flats, bare inches from where Dean wanted him and driving him further out of his mind with every scraping second.

And when Sam got him on his back and got down to it, finally, finally took Dean in both hands and began working him slow and hard and careful, Dean learned that it was a stunning kind of torture, like drowning for days, so good he thought he might break apart, just dissolve. He learned to keep his eyes on Sam, Sam who was staring down at him raptly, open-mouthed panting as he watched what he could do to his brother.

Dean learned that he could finish with a drawn-out groan against Sam's neck, gripping his hair and hissing his name, and that could be enough for Sam too, something that small could have him jerking and coming all across Dean's bared stomach, blistering and inconceivable, nothing he'd ever imagined knowing the feel of. Then Sam flopped on top of him, mouth smashed on Dean's shoulder, and their bodies formed to each other automatically, and they rested like that for minute.

The fire was almost all the way out, white ash and cigarette trails of smoke leaking up. There were coyotes howling but that was miles away.

Den blinked up at the night sky, which had gone a milky indigo color from too many diluting stars. There was a shelf of rock in his peripheral vision, the smell of rain on the air, and Dean picked out constellations of his own design, feeling Sam's skin cool down, his heart tick slower. Dean examined the opened-up feeling in his chest, the gibbering run of fear and excitement in the base of his mind, and he thought that he was probably happy right now.

After awhile, Sam started gnawing absently on Dean's shoulder. It tickled, damp and kinda strange, and so he rolled Sam off him. Sam made a discontented noise, tugging his clothes back into place gingerly, like his fingers weren't his own. Dean had his head turned all the way to the side, staring at his brother and not really trying to stop.

Sam looked back at him, gave him half a smile. "Hey Dean, you know," Sam said, all drawl and burr, splintering along Dean's oversensitive nerve endings. "We obliged believe in everything. Anything they can think of, anything they put their faith in, it's real enough to kill people, and we gotta trust that."

Dean nodded, kinda lost in Sam's skein of thoughts but he was okay with that, he knew Sam would come around to an explanation he could understand.

Sam touched his wrist, his fingertips sticky. "So you and me, we put our faith in this. I don't care what they wanna call it. I know evil when I see it and I know. I know what this is too."

Something jagged in Dean's throat and he kept swallowing past it, crimping his mouth up into a smirk. "Real enough to kill people?"

It was self-defense and Sam knew that, Sam closed his fingers around Dean's wrist and squeezed tight enough that Dean could feel the thick sluggish prod of blood gathering. It throbbed, made him suck in a breath between his teeth and he was so wrecked on this whole thing, wished that Sam would never let go.

"Real enough, Dean," Sam told him, voice rasped down and cracking but indelible for all that, carving into Dean like he was stone. "They can have their monsters; we get _this_."

Dean was kept motionless for a long moment, held by Sam's heavy-lidded eyes searching his own. He felt quieted and still and small, cradling this idea of a faith all their own, a higher power to watch over them, at long last.

He smiled at Sam, proud of him and his brilliant lunatic's mind, his pretty turns of phrase. There were probably prayers for this moment, litanies and benedictions, temptations Dean should renounce, sins he should beg forgiveness for, but Sam smiled back at him and so he swore himself to his brother with a single word:

"Okay,"

as if Sam had even had to ask.

(break)

Wyoming was as much their home territory as anywhere, Wyoming and the Black Hills where Bobby lived, and they knew the right passes through the mountain ranges, the blue mirrored-sky rivers that ran east to the high plains. Nowhere was the scope of the country clearer, the lifetime of empty space spooling out in every direction, and Dean loved every inch of it, every grain of sand.

They had most of the state to cross but first they were going to sleep in the same place for a string of nights running. Dean considered their options, then rode them over to a coal miners' camp outside Rock Springs, asking around for a man named Clapp whose daughter had been witch-cursed blind deaf and dumb before the Winchesters had shown up.

That had been three years ago, but Clapp was still alive and so was his little girl; he showed them the thick gloves she'd knitted for him, the tri-colored wool cap with a heart of white thread stitched carefully into the side. Clapp said, "Anything you need, boys, name it," with his blackened hands fit around their arms.

Sam and Dean hung around until Clapp could leave the mines, went back with him to his shotgun shack with its tar-paper roof and incongruously cheerful curtains. The girl was twelve years old and riddled with freckles and evidently hadn't paused for breath much since Sam had broken the curse on her. She remembered them as the angel boys, the ones her mother had sent down from heaven to save her from the black silent nothingworld, and she kept stumbling over her words, not enough time in the day for all she wanted to tell them. After ten minutes she was pretty transparently in love with Dean's brother, too, which Dean supposed he could tolerate, not being much for hypocrisy.

They ate dinner with the Clapps, the best they had to offer, deep red venison and wild turkey with the pellets still in, making every bite an adventure. One dim-burning oil lamp bled gold over the scene and the girl kept making corncakes for them to take, the stack tottering and ever more precarious.

Clapp found an old coat with fist-sized moth holes that Dean made Sam take, and some blankets and a dented canteen and a sack of salt that had to have cost at least a dollar and they tried to refuse but Clapp wouldn't hear of it. The girl said she would knit them overshirts and socks and hats and gloves and Sunday suits, and her dad rolled his eyes at Sam and Dean, hugged his arm around her head while she squealed happily and battered her little fists on his stomach.

Clapp led them out a couple hours before sunset, into the woods aways to a small sturdy hunting cabin fixed securely among the trees. There were two narrow rack-cots and an old-fashioned stove, its pipe sagging and showing tears, but they probably wouldn't need it, the spring nights getting warmer and shorter. Clapp showed them where there was a small weatherworn pile of firewood with black rotted splits in some of the logs, and pried up a board in the floor to reveal an emergency stash of tin cans, beans and preserves. He lent them one of his own rifles, his initials branded on the stock.

"This is more than we coulda asked for," Dean said as they stood before the cabin saying their goodbyes.

Clapp shook his hand. "It's all yours. I'll keep the other fellas away for a couple weeks, but shouldn't be too hard; ain't the season for it."

Dean tipped his hat back, swallowing. "Gotta ask you to keep our names out of it."

"Hell, boy, I ain't feeble." He spat chaw into the brush, gave the pair a brown-stained grin. "You come back to my place you can't find any game, hear?"

"Yessir. We'll probably go stir crazy in a few hours, but thank you." Dean held out his hand for Clapp to shake again, his chest feeling weirdly light. "Thank you for everything."

Clapp laughed. "Son, we ain't close to square yet."

He rode off waving, Sam calling behind him, "Tell her I said she was beautiful," and then Sam and Dean went inside, closing the door behind them.

It was hushed and poorly lit all of a sudden, smelling of must and old fires, and Dean looked at his brother, found Sam looking back and the moment became weighted. Dean took off his hat, rubbed the back of his neck and kicked at the floor, and Sam kinda smirked, rolled his eyes and went about laying the salt-lines and getting the stove going.

Dean made it about ten seconds sitting on one of the cots eyeing Sam's long legs bending and straightening as he worked, and then he grabbed the rifle and banged out into the open day, went looking for something to shoot.

He was out there until the light had gone opaque and the shallow carpet of leaves slippery, and he came up empty. He was distracted, wasting bullets on squirrels and small birds and scarring up trees within eyeshot of each other so that he could find his way back. Still jittery, trying to get the feeling of being hunted off him, Dean had more to think about than he was generally comfortable with. He was doing his best not to fear lightning bolts on top of everything else.

The trouble he was having at the moment was the permanence of the whole thing, the fact that he'd never leave his brother and never stop wanting him if he was around. They get into this and that was it for life, until one of them died, until the other could get hands on a loaded revolver and follow him over.

Dean had never had any expectation of a decent ending for them, but it all seemed awfully tragic all of a sudden.

He came back to the cabin discomfited, vaguely ashamed and pretty irritated at that. He set the rifle on its hooks and turned to snap at Sam about whatever first caught his eye, but Sam was lying on the cot in his undershirt with the soft sleeves pushed back to his elbows and his boots off. Sam was playing with a limber jack man, making him dance and clack and spin, and grinning at Dean, his hair matted, destroyed, his eyes as bright as shine off metal.

"Look what I found. His name is Lucky."

Dean couldn't help the stupid noise he made, laughing through his nose and strangling a weak groan, and he dropped back against the wall of the cabin. There were splinters coming through his shirt and he felt like he'd been punched in the gut.

"You named him?" he managed.

Sam only grinned bigger, pushed his hair back off his forehead with his free hand. His wrist flicked over and over, making the jointed manikin kick its sprightly wooden limbs.

"It's scratched on his back. Pretty appropriate, I thought."

Dean huffed, pulling himself under control and flipping his hat onto the other cot. "It wasn't luck, Sam, it was me being a genius."

Sam lowered Lucky, let him come clicking to rest, and gave Dean a look with his lip curled and his eyebrows raised.

"You made us jump off a cliff."

"Did it work? Tell me that. Is that air I see you breathing? Enjoyin' that? No need to thank me, Sammy, all in a day's work."

Sitting on the other cot, Dean commenced tugging at his boots, keeping his eyes down because Sam stretched out like that was doing unreasonable things to him, his mind flittering with all the criminally wanton things he could do to his brother. He pulled off his outer shirt and wound it between his hands, drew it taut.

"You hungry?" Dean asked his shirt.

"Nah," Sam answered. He sounded relaxed, calm. "First time in about a month, feels like."

"Yeah."

Dean tried to think of something else to say but he wasn't that kind of smart; people thought because he talked all the time he must be the brains of the operation, but talking wasn't anything, just getting rid of the quiet because who liked it when things were quiet? None of the stupid stuff he usually ran his mouth on seemed proper just now, didn't seem worth asking for Sam's attention.

"Hey Dean," Sam said, probably the one thing he said more often than anything else.

Easy to see why--it worked like clockwork, instantly brought Dean's head up and his eyes in line with Sam's. Sam was smiling a little, kinda knowing and pestered and heated all at the same time, making Dean reel, close his hand around the edge of the cot. Sam looked like he knew everything going on inside Dean's head, like he'd had it all figured out years ago, his foundations laid and his strategies in order, just waiting for his brother to catch up.

"'s a nice place you found for us to hole up in."

Dean blinked, sucked on the corner of his lip wondering what Sam's game was. "Clapp's good people."

Sam stretched, scratched at his belly under his shirt and watched Dean watching his hand. Dean let his own shirt drop onto the floor, his mouth dry. Sam just kept smiling at him, waiting for him.

"Sam, you know," Dean started, and he had exactly no idea where he was going with that, his eyes stuck on the slender strip of pale brown skin he could see low on Sam's stomach. Sam saved him from whatever idiotic thing he might have come up with, telling him:

"Whatever it is, Dean, yeah, I know." Sam sat up and stripped off his shirt, making Dean jerk, his mouth falling open and his carefully guarded defenses vanished like they'd never been. "C'mon, man, the day's wastin' and you're still way the hell over there for some reason."

Dean was gone, clean out of his mind from then on. He lost chunks of time and came back to himself straddling his brother's body, hands all over all there was of him, sharply aware of the hard edge of the cot digging into his knee, Sam's ribs bumping under his fingers. Sam slid his hands under Dean's undershirt and up his body and off in one deft move, and then brought his hands with the cloth tied between them behind Dean's head, pulled him into a kiss that didn't end for the longest time.

They lived in the cabin for a week.

In the mornings they woke up in their separate cots, sunless icy drafts breaching the slivered cracks in the walls, and they ate a cold breakfast huddled up together for warmth, Sam in the moth-eaten black coat and Dean with a blanket shawled around his shoulders. They were neither of them very good when they'd just woke up, not up to making a fire or coffee or conversation. Dean's brain had to warm up like an engine, little cranks and gears snicking into their right places.

It was companionable, anyway, calm and unrushed as he bent to wash his face with water from the ewer, and Sam's hand set on his back, pattering along the ridge of his spine. Sam was waiting for his turn, yawning audibly and popping his joints, and Dean's first clear thought would be something about Sam's body, memories of the night before and hopes for the day ahead.

They went out once the air started to warm up, the sun breaking above the dense trees and haphazardly dribbling light. Dean hunted game different than he hunted everything else, the nervy agitation gone but all the grace still there, the innate joy he took in it. He barely made any sound at all, his boots keeping the secret for him.

Sam trailed behind, sometimes a dozen yards or so back foraging but always in sight of Dean when he checked over his shoulder. Sam found acorns and chokecherries and some strange flat seeds that he said were close to sunflower seeds but Dean wasn't quite buying it.

One day Sam tripped on a root and fell against a tree, smashing his sack against his body and crushing the cherries, and after that there was a bloody stain on Sam's shirt that Dean couldn't keep his eyes off.

Dean followed whitetail deer and pronghorn stags, thick tawny coats and the horns curved in towards each other like an incompletely drawn heart, and he had a few chances to bring one down, but at the last second the rifle barrel would jag almost infinitesimally and the bullet would shear off some of the animal's hair, give it the second it needed to wink away into the forest.

After the third time it happened, Dean turned on his meddling brother, eyebrows down and mouth set hard.

"Do you _mind_?" Dean asked, shaking his rifle at Sam. Sam bugged his eyes, biting back a grin.

"What? Don't blame me 'cause you can't shoot."

"_Sam_," Dean said threateningly, because though he loved his brother in a consuming and full-body sort of way, he still wasn't going to stand here listening to Sam denigrate his _aim_.

Sam's teeth flashed white, the grin escaping him for a split second. Sam grinned much easier out here in the middle of nowhere.

"Good-lookin' creatures, those pronghorn," Sam remarked. "Downright majestic, don't ya think?"

"Oh god." Dean plastered a hand over his face. "You've gone soft. No, soft in the _head_."

"Certainly would explain a lot," Sam said agreeably, rocking on his heels with his thumbs hooked in his belt, just smiling at Dean like he couldn't imagine a better day.

Dean asked if he could only hunt ugly animals now and Sam replied that there had to be some weasels or deformed cottontails around somewhere, and then Dean was grinning too, even though he shouldn't be encouraging Sam, and he didn't _want_ weasel for supper, and nothing this good ever lasted.

They passed the long afternoons outside in the patchy sunlight, playing cards and Sam whittling and Dean practicing his knife throwing. Sometimes Sam fell asleep stretched out on the ground in front of the cabin, and when he woke up he'd have little twigs and leaves in his hair, and Dean never mentioned it to him.

Then when the light started to go, they had their supper, sitting next to each other on the floor with their knees touching and Lucky watching from the shelf, his red-painted mouth smiling down on them. Dean was allowed to look at Sam all he wanted now, any part of him he wanted, and that above almost everything else was the hardest thing to get used to.

And eventually Sam took his nicked tin plate and Dean's and set them aside, turned back to his brother and tipped his face up with one hand and kissed him deep, humming. Every night, every time, Dean felt the vast world around go as gray and flat as a photograph, a poor shadow of what existence was meant to be, what it was when he had Sam's mouth on his.

They did everything. Dean didn't even recognize half of it. They found their way by touch as the night built up around them, guided by gasps and moans. The cots weren't half as big as they needed to be, and so Sam and Dean piled their blankets on the floor, scraping their heels and knuckles on the scabrous floor.

Sam lay back with his legs crooked around Dean's body, his eyes slanted and eerie-looking and Dean figured it out after a minute, that Sam's eyes were blown with desire and ink-black, and that was the cause of the cowardly tail of fear curling in his chest. He shoved it aside, panting ragged and wild, skidding his open mouth on a line down the center of his brother's body.

Insane things Dean wanted to do, these pictures in his head that would be the ruin of a lesser man, but Sam just kept saying yes, yes, okay, please. Dean slid Sam's legs over his shoulders, the backs of his knees slotting into place and Dean's tongue scorching on the inside of his thigh. Sam had a hand in Dean's hair and a hand tight around the base of his prick, too close already and Dean hadn't even gotten started.

He needed to make Sam as crazy as Sam made him, because they could survive anything if they faced it together, and so Dean worked Sam open for him slow, mouth and fingers and Sam writhing in the gossamer light creeping over the cabin floor as the moon rose, found its way behind a cloud and doused them both in shadow. Almost blind, then, as Dean finally pushed to his knees and bent his brother carefully in half, seeing nothing but Sam's wide eyes, his mouth begging for it.

They spent hours at it, dozed shocky and limp sprawled across each other's bodies in the stretches between. Dean drifted into consciousness with Sam's head on his chest, his arm draped across his brother's broad back, and he allowed himself that for ten minutes, maybe twenty at the outside, fighting to stay still instead of trembling stupidly like he wanted to, before prodding Sam half-awake and getting them both into their cots so they could sleep for real.

Days passed. Towards the end of their stay it rained, and they burrowed in the cabin for the length of the storm, half-dressed and unable to keep away from each other, counting the seconds between lightning and thunder and craning their heads back to drink from the trickling leaks in the roof.

It was late April of Dean's twenty-eighth year, and this was as happy as he would ever be.

(break)

By the time they finally got to Bobby's place a couple weeks later, riding two horses that would never replace the ones they'd lost, Dean had almost forgot why they were going there in the first place. The Union-Pacific hunt Bobby had sent them on and the demon posse and that ungodly week they'd spent on the run, it had all faded back for him and become campfire stories he had heard someone else tell. It felt like it had been years since anything had tried to kill them.

That streak held right up until they came around the bend into sight of Bobby's ramshackle hermit's house, and a shotgun blast tore the sky open.

Sam and Dean flung themselves off and behind their horses, hands wrenched in the reins as the animals tried to buck and bolt. Dean looked for Sam and Sam was gaping back, badly spooked, and Dean peered over his horse's saddle.

Bobby was standing on his porch, chocking his shotgun. Dean snatched off his hat, waved it fiercely like a white flag.

"Bobby, it's me, it's Dean!" Dean shouted, then paused, added, "Winchester!"

"Dean Winchester is dead!" Bobby yelled back, and drew a bead on him again.

Dean ducked back behind the horse, exchanged a grasping look with his brother. Sam shook his head, unbuckling his newly-acquired gun belt and tossing it over his horse to clunk where Bobby could see it. Dean got his idea and took off his own, threw it over. The Colt was still tucked at the small of his back, but no one had to know about that.

They moved out from behind the horses slowly, empty hands raised above their heads. Bobby had his shotgun leveled and Dean stepped in front of Sam without thinking about it. He could feel the power in Sam thrumming, making the air shimmer slightly, banked in case he needed to jerk the gun out of Bobby's hand.

Bobby's face fell open as he got a better look at them, the shotgun barrel wavering and dipping before he brought it up steady again, locking his jaw.

"_Christo_," Bobby said on a hiss.

Without dropping their hands, Sam and Dean began in unison, just how Bobby had taught them, "_Pater noster qui es in coelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum; adveniat regnum tuum, fiat voluntas tua_-" until Bobby cut them off, stammering:

"Stop, stop, that's enough,"

and then he cast his shotgun aside with a clatter, coming to grab them both in a hard hug. Dean banged his fist on Bobby's shoulder, eyes stinging at the dust raised.

Bobby pushed them back, one hand on each's shoulder and his disbelieving gaze tracking over them. Sam and Dean stood patiently for it, grinning kinda.

"Jesus everlovin' Christ. Where in seven hells have you boys been?"

"Wyoming," Dean told him, taking note of a new scar healing on Bobby's face, pink-white line breaking the scruff of his beard. "What the fuck were you on about, Dean Winchester's dead?"

Bobby shook his head, went to touch Dean's face like a father but it morphed into a weak knock to his jaw instead, Bobby's eyes narrowing and becoming shielded.

"Thought you were. Thought you _both_ were. C'mon, let's get inside."

They strapped their gun belts back on and Bobby hustled them up to the porch while he took their horses to the half-barn round back. There was a pot of tea screeching from inside the house, so they went to take it off the heat.

Books on the butcher block table in Bobby's kitchen, and Sam immediately sat down and stuck his nose in one, hmm'ing a thanks as Dean put a cup of tea in front of him. Bobby came in dusting his hands, still looking at both of them with this tinge of astonishment.

"Jessup at the Holy Moses said you picked up my message almost a month ago, and then with what happened to the Flyer-"

"What happened to the Flyer?" Sam asked, book held open on the table and his eyes on Bobby's. "It was demons, you heard that?"

Bobby nodded, a harsh guilty look crossing his face. "Put the pieces together just a couple days after I left you that note. Thought the trains themselves were getting infested, but those fuckin' demons were just jumping from train crew to train crew." He squinted at them, looking like he already knew the answer as he asked, "They came after you?"

"Sure did," Dean said with a big phony grin, mean slice to it. "Ran us all the way to Idaho, took us for everything we had."

Bobby's eyebrows ticked up, dull-burning fear in his face. "Not the Colt?"

Dean shook his head, pulling out the gun and laying it on the table. Bobby breathed out, the tense planes of his expression giving, and nodded, "Thank god." He turned to fix himself a cup of tea, his hands shaking. Sam and Dean traded looks.

"Bobby," Sam said, shrewd tone in his voice. "Dean heard one of them say our name." Bobby's head jerked up, and Sam said, "And it's lookin' like a pretty fair bet that you know why."

Bobby pressed his lips together, eyes slate-colored and pained. Dean got a creeping nervous sensation in his stomach, wishing he were a boy again and could clap his hands over his ears, refuse to hear what Bobby said next.

"They know you have the Colt," Bobby said plainly. "They lost track of it after your granddaddy died because I guess they never figured on him passing it down to his daughter, but they've worked it out now. You boys have gotten a little too famous for your own good."

Dean sank into a chair without noticing what he was doing. His hand fell across the Colt and drew it to him, moving dreamily. He could see Sam's hand clenched in a fist on the table, knuckles brushing the clay teacup and making it rattle.

"They know," Sam said slowly, spelling it out because this was no time for miscommunication. "The demons know we have the only weapon this side of Perdition that can kill them."

Bobby looked at him, jaw rigid and a bad cast of helplessness across his features. He nodded briefly, glancing at Dean to share it with him. Dean had no memories of Bobby before his hair had gone gray, before his face had a map of the world etched on it, but the man had never really seemed old like he did in that moment.

Sam moved his leg into Dean's under the table, said hoarsely, "It's not over. It won't, it'll never be, it'll be the whole goddamn thing all over again."

Dean shook his head, hand clenched on the edge of the table, mind working hectically, throat bobbing as he swallowed. They couldn't do it again, driven to skin and bone side by side and forced to watch it happening, their hearts wouldn't hold out, nor their luck, no more forgiving cliffs.

"Look," Bobby was saying. "I'll take it for you, keep it buried up in the caves, ten-deep in protections."

Sam shook his head, sneering thoughtlessly. "What good'll that do, like they'd hold off killing us if we don't have what they want. You'd just be puttin' yourself next in their sights."

"Sam-" Dean said, throat closed up.

"No, man, that's it," Sam said, small hysterical trill in his voice. "Can't run from 'em, can't hide for long. The cliff threw them off but they gotta be back on the trail by now, probably already got to Clapp and Susannah, they're probably already on the way _here_-"

Dean grabbed a fistful of Sam's hair, yanked hard enough to make him cry out and crumple, sagging in the chair. The teacup shattered suddenly, just exploded right there on the table. Bobby startled and stepped forward, concerned and confused and Dean thrust his free hand into the air to hold him back. He dragged Sam's head close to his gently, hand opened and cradling.

"Take a breath, Sammy," Dean told him in a low voice. Their foreheads bumped, and Sam's chest hitched. Dean stroked at his hair a bit, not at all interested if Bobby thought it looked odd. "Never been a fix we haven't got out of, 'member?"

Sam shut his eyes tight, pressed his lips into a thread. Dean watched him willfully strip the panic away, his shoulders pulling up, the flush fading down his neck. He slid his hand down Sam's neck to clasp his shoulder, drawing back to a respectable distance.

Dean looked over at Bobby, who was eyeing the shards of the teacup with the same pinched leery expression he'd shown the few other times Sam had slipped up around him. Bobby wasn't one of the ones who thought Sam was evil, of course, but he'd always reserved his judgment on the things Sam could do.

"Got enough to feed us?" Dean asked, wanting to draw his attention. "Looks like we got us a plan needs hatching."

Bobby nodded, went out to his storehouse, placing a hand on Dean's shoulder as he passed. Dean waited until his shadow had crossed outside the window before pushing his hand back into Sam's hair.

"We'll think of something," he said quietly.

Sam nodded, angling his neck so that his hair tugged against Dean's fingers. He looked at Dean sideways, eyes a murky green color, his mouth bent sadly. Dean didn't like that look on Sam's face, and he put his fingers on Sam's lips, shaping a halfhearted smile. Sam glared at him, but then tilted forward and crashed a kiss on Dean's cheek, off-balance and too hard, and Dean put his face into Sam's shoulder, held them both still for a moment.

They ate and Bobby had some tobacco so they sat out on the porch smoking afterwards, talking about inconsequential things for a half hour or so, all that Sam would allow them. It was twilight, nightlife starting up out in the weave of the trees and Dean thought about how their dad used to play the harmonica for them in tune with the cicadas and whippoorwills, Sam and Dean stomping on wood floors to keep the beat.

Back inside, they sat around the big table in Bobby's main room, arguing and scratching for ideas, books and rolls of paper spread out on every available inch of space. Sam and Dean kicked at each other under the table, stomped toes and bruised shins, but there was no malice to it at all, just a vague recurrent desire to make physical contact in some way, the quickest and easiest path available.

Sometime in the small hours of the morning, Dean's eyes feeling dug out and coated in powdered glass before being shoved back into his skull, Sam threw a book down in disgust and said:

"This is a waste a time, we ain't gonna study up an answer for how to keep all of hell from gunning for us, nor how to fight them off."

Dean put down his book too, considerably relieved that Sam had finally arrived at that conclusion. Dean's head was about to split, his eyes feeling bright red and scratchy.

"Then it's running," he said, sitting back.

Sam rubbed at his face, took a few slurps of coffee from a blue metal cup. His mouth was all twisted in a grimace, forehead creased.

"Where can we run that they can't get?"

"It's more a question of, where can you run that they won't find. All kinds'a corners in this world," Bobby said, getting up to fetch a globe from a high shelf, the oceans the rich brown color of good leather and the land like parchment.

He set it down before them and the brothers gave it a long look, chary and reluctant. Dean could see Australia, all those strangely shaped islands clustered nearby, so many their names didn't fit. The other side of the world, and he'd never really got a good sense of that until now.

He looked at Sam, nudged him with his elbow. "Go 'head."

Sam glanced at him, gave the globe a spin. He let it go for a few seconds and then set his fingertip down to stop it. He hit water the first three times, and then landed in Siberia, the Yukon Territory, and Moscow, all rejected for reasons of cold, before Bobby suggested mildly that they might want to try the Southern Hemisphere instead.

Four more times the globe told them to run to the bottom of the sea, and then:

"Bolivia," Sam read carefully off the globe. "I'm pretty sure I knew that was a country."

"Puts you one up on me," Dean said, looking to Bobby for help.

Bobby was still on his feet, and went to rummage in one of his bookshelves, saying over his shoulder, "It's likely enough as any other place, I suppose. Silver, if I'm recollectin' right, lots of silver. Here we go."

He brought Sam another book, and Dean leaned to get a look at the title: _Lands of South America_. Sam flipped to the right page, and they both studied the cheap ink drawings, the skeletal plants that were supposed to be as tall as a man, the horrid-looking animals with their hooked claws and ringed eyes. There were mountains and jungles and tin and gold to go along with the silver Bobby had mentioned, and Dean sounded out Cochabamba and Guayaramerin, warping his mouth around the bulky names. Sam snickered at his terrible pronunciation, and Dean was tipped against his brother's shoulder, grinning at the regular sound of Sam's laugh and forgetting their predicament for a second.

"They got ghosts there, Bobby?" Dean asked. Bobby snorted, rolled his eyes.

"Ain't nowhere on earth doesn't have ghosts, boy."

"Good, I don't want to be gettin' homesick." Dean gave Sam a poke. "'s all right, Sam?"

"Yeah," Sam said with a sigh that wasn't quite sad, setting the book aside. "Guess it'll do."

Bobby went to the kitchen to get three cloudy glasses and bottle of whiskey. Dean sat back in his chair, flicking at the globe idly, keeping it spinning and trailing his finger over all those thousands of miles. They lifted their glasses, "Bolivia," and Dean hooked his ankle around his brother's, crossed his fingers for luck and drank to their brand-new future.

(break)


	3. Chapter 3

They stayed at Bobby's place for a few days, but Sam kept twitching and knocking things over with his mind, his mouth pinched and anxious. He still thought the demons might show, bugging Dean to get gone already.

Bobby went into town and got them outfitted with better supplies, but they would be traveling light, horseback to St. Louis because neither of them was getting anywhere near a train west of the Mississippi. The Union-Pacific Railroad had lost their business for good.

Sam spent his time reading up everything Bobby had on South American cultures and lore, learning random chunks of Spanish poetry that he rattled off for Dean while Dean cleaned weapons and made dinner and played solitaire. Sam told him that Incan ghosts were probably going to be easier to deal with than Aztecs would have been. Sam told him stories about angels with black wings and the heads of jaguars, and Dean had terrible dreams that night.

Dean didn't know what they were going to do when they got to Bolivia. He was trying not to worry too much about it, trying to have faith in everyday things like Sam wanted him to.

They were sailing out of New York City. Bobby unearthed a ship's advertisement with a colored drawing of the Statue of Liberty, brassy copper shine with the torch a perfect yellow wave of flame. Sam and Dean had never been east of Chicago, and Bobby told them outlandish yarns about the mammoth coastal cities, gadgets and automatons for the slightest task, vicious beasts living in the sewers, buildings too tall to see the tops of and colored solid black from the soot. He said that they could live their whole lives there and never make a dent on the population of restless spirits, the immigrant curses brought from every country the world; Bobby said that it would take an army.

These were like nursery tales for Sam and Dean, the stuff they'd grown up on. Dean fell asleep curled up on the bear rug in front of the fireplace, Bobby's steady voice lulling him under, and woke up with Sam's feet planted on his back, Sam conked out in an overstuffed chair in an untidy sprawl.

Dean struggled to his feet, shook his brother awake. They soft-stepped through the creaking house to the spare bedroom where there was one cot and a nest of blankets on the floor. Dean wouldn't touch Sam because he didn't think he'd be able to stop, and Bobby was snoring just through the wall. Sam didn't care, pushed Dean back against the door and kissed him and kissed him and kissed him until his head spun and his skin hummed, whispering, "Goodnight, goodnight," into Dean's mouth.

The night before they left, Bobby broke out his good moonshine and they sat out on the porch until even the insects had been exhausted, breaking each other up with stupid jokes and crazy stories. Dean laughed so hard his head felt achy and disconnected from his body like a hot air balloon. Sam rolled off the porch and lolled about in the yard getting his clothes dusty, limbs gone loose and his grin messy, easy. Dean kept staring at him, thinking that he was going to find the thickest patch the Amazon had to offer, hammer together a little house under the dense green trees and hide Sam away from everybody else.

Sam and Dean both slept on the floor of the spare room that night, twined together still in their boots and shirts. Bobby kicked them awake in the morning, Dean's arm tossed over his brother's chest and Bobby didn't seem to think anything of it. They were all whipped by hangovers, grunting and restricting the emotional elements of their goodbyes to clapped hugs and long tight handshakes.

They rode off, looking back to see Bobby with his hand raised. Dean almost wondered aloud if they'd ever see him again, but then his brain caught up and he throttled the question, flung it back.

He had a very bad headache, jostled with every stride the horse took. He got sick an hour or so in, once the sun was high enough to batter down on him and fill his vision with spots. Sam crouched beside him as he threw up his breakfast into a ditch, wetting his hand with water from the canteen and pressing it to Dean's hot forehead, over his hair.

Dean sat back on his haunches carefully, gave a weak little laugh. "Off to a good start, ain't we?"

Sam smirked, his eyes ringed and bloodshot. "Nowhere to go but up."

They got into the rhythm of the road, winding down into Nebraska and Kansas where summer was already in full swing, the fields thrown out green and gold and the apples tumbling out of trees as they rode past. Sam went without his overshirt for the warmest few hours of each day, and the skin of his forearms tanned to the color of polished mahogany.

Zagging slightly off a crow's path, they touched on a few old haunts, their rare steadfast friends, just enough to put around the story that they were lighting out for California and good riddance. They went through Lawrence, where they'd both been born, visiting the graves of their mother and her family, and then headed straight east.

They rode as much as the horses could reasonably bear. Dean was still trying to quit torturing himself with pictures of his girl starving and tangibly dying beneath him, her slick black coat gone ashen and brittle. He wondered if anyone had found her, or maybe she was running free now. He asked Sam what he thought and Sam said he figured Dean had spoiled her well enough that she'd never do for anyone else again. Sam said she'd probably live another quarter-century and be the last wild horse the West would ever see, and Dean liked the sound of that.

The weather held out, a long unnerving stillness in the air, like counting down seconds after sparking the fuse on a stick of dynamite. Sometimes there was lightning but never rain.

They weren't staying in boarding houses or brothels, not having the money for it and anyway, it wasn't safe enough. Neither of them would have been able to sleep in a house full of possessable people. So every night they got off the main road and found a place to camp out in the nothingness all around, somewhere where a fire wouldn't give them away and they might be left to themselves.

No different than any other night from the past two decades, passing food to Sam over low-burning flames, hearing the clink of the tin cups and coffee pot, spreading out their blankets close to one another for warmth and security and a hundred other reasons. Dean could have been fifteen again, waking up in the middle of the night to find Sam squirmed out from under his blankets and obliging Dean to tug them straight again. Sam flopped over, rolled and kicked out his discontent. He'd always been able to sleep through pretty much anything Dean tried on him, endlessly frustrating considering that a feather dropped by an outsider could stir him otherwise.

Dean didn't want to watch him sleeping but he was awake now, and he didn't have anything else to look at, the millions of strewn-salt stars having long since lost their novelty. Sam had lines on his forehead and his mouth screwed in a knot because even in his sleep he had to think too much. Dean pushed at Sam's forehead with his thumb, trying to smooth him like clay but it didn't take.

All of this had happened so many times before, everything save the fifteen minutes earlier when Sam had snuck his hand under Dean's blanket and Dean had snuck his hand under Sam's and they'd stroked each other off lying side by side on their backs, gasping quietly up at the sky.

That had been Sam's idea. He'd pushed Dean's face away when Dean tried to kiss him, held his shoulder down and said, "Like if we were kids," in this torn-up voice that Dean couldn't refuse.

So they kept it simple, near-silent, like their father was right on the other side of the fire, and maybe Dean could kind of understand what Sam was after. There was no way to kiss Sam like a brother, but there was a way to jerk him off like one, like teenagers trapped in tiny rooms, het up with the maddening itch and no one else to turn to, a sin at once mortal and immediately absolved, something that must happen a thousand times a day, even if Sam and Dean never had, they could now.

It settled something in him, this idea that he could have Sam and have his brother still. Dean didn't trust the feeling, sensing that there was something wrong with the logic of it, but then a pleading groan came keening from Sam and Dean forgot to care.

They got to St. Louis and sold their horses, found a good-sized riverboat where they could get lost in the crowd, and tripled their take. Sam only had to rig the roulette wheel a couple of times, after Dean got pissed off at a pompous Texan who kept sneering at his boots and daring him on double shots, lost more than he could afford playing drunk and angry.

But that was why he had a brother with magical powers, Dean thought woozily, leaning an a slippery brass rail watching the white ball flicker and dance under Sam's steady eye. Any time Dean had a problem, Sam was his first idea for a fix. Sam was the net underneath him, and Dean stumbled over, put his arm around his brother's shoulders.

"'He flies through the air with the greatest of ease,'" Dean said in a lilting slur.

Sam smirked, his eyes on the ticking roulette wheel, his side flush with Dean's. "'That daring young man on the flying trapeze,'" he finished, and won ten dollars.

The train ride to New York City was draining, to say the least. Sam and Dean jerked every time a crew member approached, gazes baleful and ever-suspicious as the conductor made his rounds. They slept in jagged snatches in their seats, a couple hours at a time with one always keeping watch, and ate poorly, spoke only to each other. By the time the land filled in with houses and churches and the sky tinged gray, Dean was going out of his skin, dying to be anywhere else.

New York wasn't that much better, though, claustrophobic and sepia-toned by night when the men on stilts kindled the gaslights to smolder in straight lines. Everything was busier and dirtier than the range, civilization evident in the gentlemen's buttoned-up suits, the ladies with their elaborate hats erupting with lace and fake birds. Dean felt coarse and rough, stepping into the ordure and refuse of the gutters to let swells pass unobstructed. Sam kept doffing his hat at everyone they met.

There was almost a month before their ship was due to sail, and they were staying with some Chinamen that Bobby'd had some business with in the past, sleeping in hammocks in the back of an apothecary that reeked of herbs and medicines completely unfamiliar to them. Thick and spiced like smoke, the air seeped into them and they both had erratic visionary dreams, all thundering fire and bloody stucco.

Sam and Dean occupied themselves best they could, gambling and odd jobs around Chinatown, keeping a jittery distance between them because there were so many people, so many eyes. Maybe no one knew they were brothers this far east, the names Robert Parker and Harry Longabaugh printed in blurring ink on their steamship tickets, but that didn't stop Dean's hand from jerking away.

They took the trolley up to Coney Island one day and followed the clatter and holler down the wooden sidewalks to the Steeplechase, spreading out in a manic glitter like a little boy's dream. Dean killed a flock of clay pigeons and Sam ate spun sugar until his mouth was sparkling and sticky-pink. They stayed away from the treacherous racket of the rollercoasters and drank lemonade with a view of the beach, the pale folks squinting and laughing and splashing.

They weren't talking about Bolivia, the way they were fleeing everything they'd ever known and god only knew when they'd make it home. Dean kept trying to remind himself, we don't _have_ a home.

A few days before they sailed, Sam and Dean walked all the way up through the park to the Polo Grounds, pushed through the turnstiles and the crowds. Way down the left field line they watched the Giants kick the holy hell out of Brooklyn, stamping and crow-calling and rising as one with fifteen hundred other people.

Walking back through the warm summer night, Dean said, "Baseball."

"What?"

"Something else we're gonna miss."

"Dean, that was the first professional game we've ever been to."

Dean waved that away. "Just sayin'. Lots'a stuff here you can't get anywhere else."

Sam didn't answer for a moment, and they walked a little farther. Dean caught himself listening for the ring of spurs behind them, shook that off.

"Don't take it so hard," Sam said eventually, features softened by the muddled light.

Dean scoffed. "Ain't."

"I know, I know. Just, try not to take it so hard."

That got Sam a scowl, an irritated breath. Dean shoved his hands in his pockets, thinking sourly that his brother wasn't always as smart as he made out. Sure, Dean was feeling off, harassed and unstrung from all this waiting around, this killing time, but he wasn't taking it hard. He didn't have any real connection to this country except for all the blood his family had spilled on her land.

The steamship was as long as a city block, and seemed from below as tall as the cliff Sam and Dean had jumped off. Sam whistled low at the sight of it, and Dean thought it was the single biggest thing he'd ever seen that didn't have a foundation.

Their two-berth room in third class was a different matter, so narrow Sam couldn't comfortably fit his shoulders and had to stand sideways. There were two miniscule bunks on one wall and a basin the size of a soup bowl opposite the door, a shaving mirror no bigger than Sam's hand nailed up over it. Both their feet stuck out the ends of the bunks.

Dean could barely breathe in there, and they spent most of their time on deck, searching the ocean for they didn't know what, finding no sign.

At night with the lamp doused, their room was a deeper black than Dean had ever known, something his eyes never adjusted to because there was no light at all. They were separated from the moon by dozens of layers of steel; the door was sealed watertight. It was easier for Dean like that. He and Sam crammed into one of the tiny bunks and rubbed off against each other slow because they didn't have room to do more, couldn't see their way even if they did.

The room was the same suffocating size in the dark, but somehow it didn't matter at all if Dean couldn't see it. Sam said that was normal, but it still felt like some kind of minor miracle.

They came into harbor in Rio de Janeiro at the hottest point of the summer. The train ride inland to Bolivia was a pretty good approximation of hell, pitiless days spent melting into their seats, hanging their heads out the window trying to get some kind of breeze and being rewarded with pelts of sooty black smoke. Sam was red-faced and glaze-eyed all the time and Dean thought he might be running a fever but he couldn't tell because everything felt at least a hundred degrees.

Dean was weary in his bones, in every fragmented inch, months of traveling behind them and he wanted to be done. He just wanted to _stop_, and he didn't think he cared where, but then the train left them at a station that was just a crumbling wall with arches set into it and the town's name painted on a swinging board, bleached away by the sun. The arches opened directly onto a scrubby dirt patch clustered with pigs and chickens and strange long-necked animals the size of donkeys with thick cream-colored coats. There were a few thatched-roof houses, but no people around, and the whole thing looked uninhabited for a dozen generations.

Sam and Dean stood next to each other, staring with dismay at the decrepit scene.

"This," Sam said slowly. "Is not quite what I was expecting." He glanced at Dean as his brother moved into the yard. "All of Bolivia can't look like this."

"How do you know?" Dean said from where he was wandering ankle-deep in piglets, gaping in disgust. "This might be the garden spot of the whole country. People may travel hundreds of miles just to get to this spot where we're standing now."

He stepped in something foul-smelling and cursed, kicking at the ground and swearing viciously. Chickens scattered away from him, squawking, and Dean looked up to find his brother smirking.

"Boy, a few dark clouds on your horizon and you just go all to pieces, don't ya?" Sam said.

Dean snatched up a piglet and threw it at him. Sam dodged, and the little pig landed skidding on its stomach, squealing and skittering away. He crossed his arms over his chest, gave Dean a look.

"Get a hold of yourself, would you. Remember why we're here."

"'Cause we had no choice!" Dean said, almost offended. Sam only rolled his eyes.

"'Cause we're hidin' out from demons, Dean. We _want_ the middle of nowhere. We _want_ godforsaken."

Dean shook his head but didn't argue. He came back over to his brother, stomped his boots on the stone to get the filth off, and served Sam a solid smack to the back of his head, just because. Sam's hat tumbled off and he caught it neatly in front of him, rolled it back onto his head.

"C'mon, man," Sam said. "Let's get lost."

(break)

They found their way to what passed for a city this far south, the buildings made adobe and gray stone and stalls set up in the plazas selling fruits and vegetables and hard chunks of cheese, everything covered with a fine layer of dust. Sam tried out his new Spanish on a boy tending to some horses, and got snickered at for his accent, directed to a saloon.

Saloons were probably the same the world over, Dean thought as they settled in at a back table. There were men who looked like solid clots of dirt parked at the bar, spotted glasses full of amber beer, the hushed rattle of dice being thrown against the wall.

Sam leaned on his elbow on the table, his eyes working across the room, sizing up the men. No one was taking much notice of them, occupied in their inner lives, their drinks clutched as talismans against the constant oppression of the heat.

"All right, well, we're here," Dean said. "Now what?"

Sam side-eyed him. "How come I gotta say?"

"Sammy, we've been over this. I'm the face, you're the brains." Dean gave him a mock toast with his beer, a curling smirk. "You'll think of something. I got nothing but faith in you, little brother."

Sam snorted, scuffed his boot into Dean's under the table. "We're just gonna lay low. Make a little money gambling, then we'll see about a straight job."

Dean blanched. "Straight job? But we're outlaws." He'd thought that, if nothing else, was clear.

"Yeah, that doesn't work so well in a country where we don't know anybody. Can't turn to a life of crime, that's how you get your picture up in mail posts."

"We already _got_ our pictures up in mail posts."

"Not down here," Sam said, tapping at the table. "We can kill whatever we come across, but we can't go looking for it. Couple of Yankees askin' around after vampires and chupacabras? People are gonna remember that."

"But, a straight job?" Dean asked again, his voice high with displeasure. "Haven't had one of those since . . . I've never had one of those. Huh."

Dean scratched at his rough chin, kinda surprised. It always felt temporary while it was happening: they had to hunt this creature before it killed again and he had to play faro for three hours so they'd have a place to sleep tonight and they had to cover four hundred miles of empty prairie before the end of the week. Everything seemed unique to itself, situations popping up unexpected to keep them moving. Somehow it added up to a whole life spent on the dodge, and Dean wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel about that.

Sam nudged at his boot again, knocked his knee into Dean's. He hit it just right, too-sensitive cluster of nerves that set Dean's whole leg to buzzing.

"You know all those normal people who never see one demon their whole life, never see one _anything_, just go about their business thinkin' the world is beautiful and safe like it seems, those people, they go home at the end of the day. You know what I mean?"

"What, what the hell are you even talking about?" Dean told him, half-aghast. "We can't live like those people, you can't just stop knowing it."

Sam shook his head, his mouth knotted, giant hand dwarfing the glass. "No, I didn't say that, man, shit. Or, not literally anyway. But we can get jobs that don't involve actively searching for evil when we're supposed to be actively hiding from it at the same time. We gotta fake it, at least."

"But," Dean said, not quite a whimper but the crook in Sam's eyebrow told him it was close. "Bobby said there'd be ghosts for me to kill."

Sam laughed, clapped Dean on the back. "C'mon, with our luck? You know we're still gonna stumble into that stuff all the time."

That made Dean feel a little bit better, and then Sam ordered them some whiskeys and that finished the job, and he was smiling again, dopey and heatstruck and slanted towards his brother like a tree reaching for water.

So they spent a couple of weeks getting the lay of the land, learning the choked passes through the Andes and the run of the rivers. The jungles were traversed by single paths cutting narrowly from town to town, acres and acres of overgrown plant life stretching out around, trees indistinguishable from each other and the soil rich black, almost completely untouched by the sun.

Dean thought it was an interesting place, sunken in green with birds colored like harlequins, splotches of red and lavender and egg-yellow, winging branch to branch. The towns were tiny and backwards and the people were nice, worn down to nubs a lot of the time, but pleasant and generally accepting.

Dean's hair lightened in the scorching tropical sun and little kids always wanted to pet the streaks of dusky blonde that had showed up, never having seen that color before. Dean always sighed extravagantly, dropped to one knee and said, "_Vamos, rapído_," head cocked for the kids to get at it, eyes rolling up to Sam with a smirk.

They camped above the valleys formed by foothills of different mountains, high on the slope of land with the muzzy lights of town down below them. One blanket under them, their arms folded under their heads, they stared up at the winter constellations in the summer sky.

"Hey Dean."

"Yeah Sam."

"It's not so bad here, huh?"

Dean huffed, not wanting to admit it because he liked complaining about things and getting Sam all riled up. But the grass was soft under the blanket and he wasn't hungry and it had been a long time since anyone had taken a shot at his brother. Dean felt alien and out of place in Bolivia, but it wasn't nearly as severe as he'd feared, really only a slight heightening of a feeling he'd always known but never positively identified until now. He'd always been like this. And anyway, he liked the sound of Spanish, the beat and rattling song of it. He liked seeing Orion in the middle of July.

"Ah, I guess it's okay," Dean allowed, grinning up at the sky.

Sam rolled over, half on Dean with his arm pushing across his chest and his chin propped on his brother's chest. He kicked Dean's boots apart so there was a space to wedge his leg. Dean took in a careful breath, feeling his body press up against Sam's.

"Got a line on a job," Sam said, his chin shifting faint.

"Real job or bullshit straight job," Dean asked. He was fighting sleep, so goddamn comfortable it made him stupid.

Sam pressed a smile into Dean's shirt. "Bullshit straight job. Fella over in Santa Cruz name a Garris. Word is he keeps an eye out for Americans."

Dean grunted, pulling one hand out from under his head to lay on the high slant of Sam's back, fingers twisting up into hair. He still had his eyes on the stars, heat gathering and thickening under his skin where Sam was up against him, spreading out all gradual and molten.

"Fair 'nough," he mumbled just because he hated loose ends. He felt no pressing urge to ask what type of work, trusting that Sam wouldn't have mentioned it if it was hauling rocks in a mine or some such.

They lay there for a long moment. The stony point of Sam's chin became his cheek laid flat, his breath rustling the split where Dean's shirt was unbuttoned. Dean had mostly come to terms with this thing between them, the conversion they'd made. They had come so far, and Sam was the only thing he knew by heart down here, the only one who knew his true name. It had taken crossing a continent and tacking on an ocean, but Dean knew now that this was the same as it ever was; only the geography had changed.

"Been thinkin'," Sam said, never a good sign. Dean wound his hand gently in his hair, made an inquisitive noise. "Long term. Just in case, you know, case we have to stay down here for longer than we planned. Maybe a ranch. Some place way aways from ever'body."

Dean hummed, forcibly keeping his eyelids from drooping past half-mast. "Ranchin's brutal work."

"We're pretty tough. Get our own spread, little house somewhere."

Dean could see it, flatland penned in by the blue mountains, four-room cabin they'd build for themselves with a porch like Bobby had, sigils and protections carved into every piece of wood. They could breed horses maybe, stunning black mares.

His eyes were closed. He was smiling again, half aware of it, saying, "Whatever you want, Sam."

Sam nosed into Dean's open collar, cold nose and warm breath, his lip pulling on Dean's skin and making him shudder. Sam murmured, "I hear Argentina's lovely," and Dean slid both hands fast into his hair, dragged him up into a kiss that felt like some kind of blood oath.

Sam's hands worked swift at Dean's buckle, breathing hard into his mouth. Dean arched his hips for his brother to tug his pants and smalls down, shirt rucked up and the blanket scratchy on his bare back. He was half-hard and made it the rest of the way three seconds after Sam covered him with one hand, holding his prick flat to his belly, thumb rubbing just under the head, and a crazy bit-off sound filled Dean's mouth. Sam grinned at him, sharp in the starlight, rolled him onto his side and notched in behind him, chest to back and his rough linen shirt at the edge of too harsh where it rubbed on Dean's skin.

"Fuck, Sam," Dean managed, shoving his arm under his face and setting his teeth to the meat of his biceps, shirt dry on his tongue. Sam had his forehead on Dean's temple, his hair stinging at Dean's eyes.

"Gettin' to it," Sam answered, drawling and distracted, little bites along the line of Dean's jaw. "Christ, you beautiful fuck, every goddamn day like this, please," and he was just muttering now, keeping his mouth running as he jerked his belt open, reached for the jar of slick they'd learned to lay in with the rest of their supplies. Dean had his eyes squeezed shut, the anticipation wrecking through him worse with every second, his skin drawn tight and shivers scampering up his spine.

Then Sam was easing in, mouth buried in his brother's throat, constant low moan that matched up to Dean's perfectly. Sam had an arm shoved up Dean's shirt and wrapped around his chest, clutching his shoulder. They were both still fully dressed, skin to skin only where Sam was fucking into him, and his arm holding Dean to him, and the flat place way low on Sam's stomach pressing to the small of Dean's back. Dean was gasping, fisting his hand into the ground so he could have leverage to thrust back against his brother.

And yes, yes, he thought in the splintering moments right before, however long Sam wanted to stay down here was just fine by him.

(break)

Percy Garris was a short rolypoly sort of man with a brown vest too tight across his gut, gray beard around a mouth stuffed with rotted teeth and chaw. A couple times a minute, he spat a plug at a target, said either dammy or bingo, depending.

They met him near the mines in Santa Cruz, where he was doing some business with the men off their shifts. He gave Sam and Dean a skeptical look, noting their frayed coats and low-heeled boots.

"So you want jobs," he stated plainly, squinting through a magnifier at some shiny bit of quartz. "You're from the U.S. of A and you are seeking after employment. Bingo. Well, you couldn't have picked a more out-of-the-way place in all of Bolivia, I'll tell you that."

He scribbled something on a tablet and passed it off to a young man named Jesús, turned to give them his full attention. Dean shifted his weight, one hand hooked on his gun belt. He didn't know how you were supposed to act when asking for a straight job.

"Now, ordinarily you've got to wait to work for Percy Garris. But this ain't ordinarily. Dammy."

Sam glanced at Dean, eyebrows tipped up. "You mean there _are_ jobs."

"Yes there are jobs, there are lots of jobs, don't you want to know why?"

Sam got a sure-I'll-bite look on his face. "Yeah, why?

Garris spat brown. "Dammy. Because I cannot promise to pay you. Don't you wanna know why?"

"Okay, why?" Dean asked, taking his turn.

"On account of the payroll thieves, fellow citizens." Garris explained like they were maybe slow, hand gestures and everything. "You see, every mine around gets its payroll from La Paz. And every mine around gets its payroll held up. Some say it's the Bolivian bandits, some say it's the _bandidos yanquis_."

He'd come to stand near Dean, eyeing his weapon. "That's a fairly nice-lookin' piece. Can you hit anything?"

Dean looked at him, nonplussed. "Sometimes."

Garris nodded to himself, walked out away from the stall and pitched a plug of tobacco out about twenty feet. "Hit that," he said.

Dean went out to him, squinting at the plug blending in almost identical to the dirt. He measured the distance and brought his gun out in a neat little spin, showing off a little and he could feel Sam rolling his eyes behind him. This would be no problem, and then they would get their straight job and make the money for their ranch and melt easily into the scenery or whatever it was Sam wanted for them, and Dean lifted his weapon, sighted down his arm and fired, missing by a good six inches.

He stared in shock at the intact plug of tobacco, the skidded bullet trail in the dirt. Garris made a disapproving harrumph noise, spat and said, "Dammy." He turned away, shaking his head as he walked back towards the cantina. Dean watched him go feeling worthless, robbed of the only thing he could do well and he didn't even know _why_, and then Sam was saying loud:

"Hey Dean, hit this,"

making Garris and Dean both turn back to see him rear and whip a silver coin high and far into the air, and without thought Dean picked it cleanly out of the sky, a deafening ring echoing over them.

Dean nodded to himself, spun his gun back into the holster and shot Sam a grin. He turned to Garris, schooling his expression into one of unhurried confidence, eyebrows hiked slightly. Garris came back vaguely awed and trying to hide it, hands on his gut.

"Well, uh, considering that I'm desperate and you are just what I'm looking for, on top of which you stem from the U.S. of A., we start tomorrow morning."

He started away again, and Sam called, "You mean we got jobs?"

"Payroll guards. Bingo."

Sam and Dean went drinking that night, blew the last of their money on a room in a boarding house, hot water by the bucketful and a real bed. They tumbled each other across the sheets, clumsy and drunk-handed, and Sam was laughing so hard his face was the color of cherries, eyes screwed up and his mouth wide open. Dean was dumbstruck and unable to do anything but press himself full length against his brother and grind him down, rock into him steadily until he passed out, blissful and most of the way hard but he couldn't help it, just died a little bit right there because there could be no better moment; it was exactly what he wanted.

Sam woke him up around dawn, anyway, sucked him off as slow as a hallucination, and Dean never even got his eyes open until he'd finished and Sam had slid up his body looking for his turn. Dean couldn't do half as good, but Sam didn't seem to mind, hunching over him and whispering raggedly all the things he'd be doing to Dean if they weren't riding so far today.

It was a pretty good way to start the day, and then they napped for a little while longer, cleaned up and ate and they went to meet Garris.

The ride down the mountain was not far from idyllic, a masterfully designed day and the landscape unspooling around them verdant and seething with life. Garris yodeled 'Sweet Betsy from Pike,' taking special pleasure trilling on the _hoodle dang hoodie eye doh, hoodle dang hoodie ay._ Sam and Dean gauged the path ahead for possible ambushes until Garris called them morons and told them nobody was going to rob them going _down_ the mountain, as they had no money going _down_ the mountain.

They brushed it off, rolling their eyes at each other behind his back. Garris maybe held the most dangerous job in Bolivia, but he didn't know a fraction of what he ought to be afraid of.

La Paz was more like a real city than anything they'd seen so far, but they had no time to enjoy it, a full afternoon's ride back up the mountain to the first mine. The three of them ate in a cantina and the specialty of the house was still moving, but the beer was cold and that went a long way.

Coming back the way they'd come with the heavy leather sacks of silver money slung on the back of Garris's saddle, Dean got a creeping feeling in his gut, a sense of imminent violence that he'd developed through years of practice. He looked at Sam and Sam was looking back, face tight--he felt it too.

Garris was rambling on about Bolivian ways and being colorful, and Dean was just waiting for a half-second of space to break in and get him on his guard, when there was a brief sudden barrage of gunfire and red mushroomed on Garris's chest.

Sam shouted, and they all three rolled off their mounts, although only the Winchesters under their own power. Dean scrambled for some rocks, heard another burst of fire and one of the horses screaming, thumping headlong into the ground. He looked frantically for Sam and Sam was a little higher up, pressed into the rocks too. They exchanged quick flashing signals, four shots in the first assault and three in the second and it was at least three men, they concluded without a word spoken aloud.

Garris was bleeding out in the dirt, his hat knocked off and the shot horse struggling to rise on its forelegs nearby, collapsing in agony. The money bags had come off the horse with him and were lying mostly hidden by his body.

"Sam," he whispered urgently. "You see 'em? Can you get to 'em?"

Sam glanced down at him, shook his head. Dean wiped at his mouth with the side of his wrist, his chest hitching and crowded with hysterical laughter. Their first day of straight work ever, and look what had happened.

Dean cast about for anything that might help, some better cover maybe, and his eyes met those of a freakish-looking little monkey who tipped its head at him, its paw just like a hand curled around the branch. Dean experienced a moment of outraged bewilderment--what are we _doing_ here--but he fought that off.

They had to get the hell away. Dean signaled to Sam and they made to run but shots cracked all around them and they scurried back to the rocks, next to each other now.

Dean took off his hat, slapped it on his knee. "Fuck this. Get me those payrolls, Sammy, would you."

Sam gave him a look. "You sure? They'll see."

"I really can't come up with anything I care less about, right now. Get me the goddamn money."

Sam exhaled fast, raised his hand and brought the money sliding up the hill to them. Two shots bit at the earth right around it, and one hit the silver itself, belling a high ting, and Dean could hear the sounds of astonishment and fear somewhere up to his left, the broken bits of a prayer.

Dean got his hands on the sacks, got to his feet and hurled them cartwheeling up the slope towards the bandits. Sam and Dean gave it a minute, and then hightailed it into the woods. They found the tracks of one of the horses that had spooked at the gunfire, and followed them to a creek where Garris's mount was drinking calmly as if nothing had happened and no man had been killed on its back ten minutes ago.

Dean unhooked the canteen from the saddle and knelt to fill it up, passing his wet hand over his face and hair, adrenaline pouring off him. He heard Sam pacing behind him, swearing low to himself.

"Cowardly sons of bitches, fuckin' hiding like that, no real man kills from cover," and Sam was just upset, Dean knew, shaken and feeling powerless despite all the things he could do. It had been awhile since they'd actually had conversations with any of the people they'd seen killed.

"Come drink some water and calm down," Dean told him, tried to make it an order, which had never really worked on Sam.

His brother stalked over to him, wrenched his hand in the collar of Dean's coat. "We're gettin' that money back."

"What?" Dean went to shrug him off but Sam didn't let go. "You're outta your head, Sammy, and this little going-straight experiment is _over_."

Sam shook his head hard, his jaw stubborn and set and Dean despaired absently, knowing that look on Sam's face and knowing the argument was already pretty much over.

"You heard Garris, those guys have been killing men on this path for three years running."

"You don't know it was the same guys," Dean said, at least going through the motions. "Maybe this was their first one."

"So what if it was? Garris is still dead, ain't he?" Sam's expression gave briefly, his mouth weak for a moment before he pulled it together, glaring down at his brother. "All right, Dean, lemme put it like this: a phantom traveler just killed a man up at the pass there. Let's go wipe the fucker out."

Sam was too smart for anyone's good sometimes. Dean gave him a baleful look and stood up, leading the horse and lashing it to a tree proximal to some grass. He went back to his brother still scowling but Sam put a hand on his shoulder and that helped some.

They tracked the bandits up the mountain, through the brush and heavily layered undergrowth, following a broken trail. They didn't talk, Sam holding his Colt and Garris's revolver, Dean holding his gun and the one Colt with the four demon-killing bullets shook out and replaced with regular ones. He really hoped it didn't turn into a firefight, not wanting to use the sixty-year-old Colt more than absolutely necessary. Fuckin' Sam and his irrefutable sense of justice.

The bandits, three of them with bandoliers sparkling in the sun, were clustered on their knees in a small clearing, bickering over the distribution of the money and paying no attention to their surroundings. Dean could only make out about one word in ten, they were talking so fast and rough, but he knew the tone, and the shifty cunning looks on their dirty faces, just the same as the villains back home.

They were able to take up position on the rise just above them, Dean just in front of Sam so that he'd take the first blow and give Sam time to respond. The sun was in his eyes, but he wasn't scared, really. People couldn't really scare him much anymore.

Sam said something sharply in Spanish, making their heads jerk up. Sam spoke again, level and stern, and Dean wasn't listening close enough to understand it, but he could read the bandits' faces pretty well.

The evident leader of the men answered Sam, his hands black with grime and shining with silver coins. Every one of them had his hand on a weapon, and Dean was getting a bad feeling in stomach.

"_Deja el dinero y salga_," Sam said, and Dean knew _salga_, at least, knew the bandits weren't doing anything like it.

The leader looked leery and malicious and kind of confused, a bad combination, and as he responded in a flat dull voice, his compatriots slowly got to their feet behind him, hands hovering over their weapons.

"It's not going well, Sam," Dean said without looking at him. He wasn't taking his eyes off these guys for a second.

"Don't you think I know that?" Sam said, sounding frustrated. He said again, louder, "_¡Salga!_," and then, "Please," which made the men's faces crease with bafflement, so Sam tried, "_Por favor_," and the leader repeated, "_¿Por favor?_" and then they were drawing on the Winchesters, three hands darting and Dean was motionless for a split second and one of them was just fast enough, just barely.

Dean dropped down into a crouch, and Sam cried out behind him, Sam was _shot_, and Dean didn't think, didn't have time. He put a hole in the hand of the leader of the gang, sparking off his weapon, and then there was a bare instant to recognize the overwhelming terror flooding the men's faces as they froze in place and that meant Sam was alive, still strong enough to hold them.

Dean stepped forward, plugged the leader in the chest, then again, and again, and again. The man toppled backwards, a gurgling truncated scream as he rolled down in a mess of blood and dust and winking silver coins. Glancing back at his brother, Dean found Sam on his knees, clutching the shoulder of his outstretched arm, his face dug deep with pain and exertion.

Snarling, Dean turned back on the two remaining men, raising both his guns and steadying the barrels directly between their eyes. The men were blank with horror, pale as paper with their eyes bugging out and their hands in bloodless fists, darting from Sam to Dean like they weren't sure who scared them more.

"_Run_," Dean said with his teeth bared, and they might not have known what that meant, but Sam let them go at that moment and they obeyed without hesitation anyway, crashing away through the trees.

Dean dropped both weapons. He was staring at the dead man in the yellow grass, watching the blood soak in and river downhill. Dean thought for a second about how he'd never killed someone who was totally human at the time. It was a man lying there, nothing more.

He turned back to his brother, breathing out, "Sammy," and coming up to crouch beside him, pressing his hand over Sam's own on his shoulder. "Are you okay?"

Sam was white-lipped, gouged creases at the corners of his eyes. He nodded jerkily, but his hand was covered in red. Dean pulled him up, supported him when he teetered.

"C'mon, let's get you back to that creek and I'll get the bullet out." Dean's voice was shaking, not caring if Sam could hear.

Sam stumbled, strength sapping out of him, and he leaned hard on Dean, whining under his breath from the pain. Dean grabbed the money up, babbling at his brother, it's okay not much farther you're doin' fine, and concentrated on keeping Sam upright, trying not to replay what had just happened.

"Never, never done that before," Sam managed to say, kinda wheezing.

"Keep quiet, Sam, we're real close now."

Sam banged his head off Dean's shoulder, losing his hat. "Just held him so you could kill him, never ever used it like that before."

Dean couldn't swallow, couldn't breathe. "Shut up, please," he begged, hauling his brother along and slamming off trees.

"Don' wanna go straight if it's people we have to kill," Sam mumbled into Dean's back, and Dean nodded, blinking fast because his eyes ached and he thought he might be about to cry.

"It's okay," Dean told him, probably lying but who could blame him, and then, "We'll think of something," which was something he'd said to his brother a hundred times and it had always been true before. As they came into view of the water, waiting to wash the blood off their hands, Dean thought hopelessly that he would trade all the silver on his back in a heartbeat if they would just be given one more chance to get out.

(break)

The two bandits that had survived were named Beto and Pablo, and they sprinted all the way down the mountain, guns banging on their hips, heads full of panic and awe. There was a cantina where they were known, where a man who worked in the mines met to tell them when the payrolls were due, and they fell in through the door hanging on each other and stuttering through their story.

They said that there had been a sorcerer up at the pass. A foot taller than a normal man with slitted marble eyes like a caiman, he had lifted his hand and denied gravity. He had lifted his hand and frozen time. The other man, the monster's first, had been as any other, scarred up and plainly mortal without that blaze of vicious energy around him, but he surely must have sold his soul and all human decency to partner with such a thing, and he had slaughtered Guillermo without the slightest pause.

Beto and Pablo spoke with genuine fear still rioting in their faces and voices, and they were believed because they were not drunk, because strange things happened sometimes, sometimes evil walked the earth in unanticipated forms and anyone who'd spent any time at all in the jungle could attest to that.

By nightfall there were thirty men listening to the two bandits. Other people soon had their own stories about the pair of tall Americans, so recently arrived but it was quickly learned that three farms they'd passed had gotten blight, and a man had lost six llamas to some unknown infection that had passed to his son against all the mercies of nature and now the boy was in the ground by his father's hand, and who was going to answer for that?

By noon the next day, their numbers were up to fifty, outlaws and respectable men both spilling out of the cantina onto the baked dirt courtyard, honing their machetes and cleaning their arms to gleam in the blinding light. In everything but dress, they looked for all the world like a small company of soldiers, readying for their next assault.

They sent lookouts to watch the path down from the mountains. They picked positions, filled their pockets with ammunition, making barbaric promises for what they would do when the demon and his man rode into town.

If Sam and Dean had known about any of this, they would have done things a lot differently.

(break)

The bullet came out of Sam's shoulder excruciatingly slow, and he clenched his teeth on Dean's gun belt so hard the tendons in his neck stood out flushed and thick, doing his best to muffle his moans but a few snuck out all throttled and warped. Sam was sweating, jerking, and Dean couldn't get a grip. He was kneeling on Sam's chest at the edge of the creek, digging the tip of his knife into the hole in his brother's shoulder, and he couldn't, he had to stop, had to fall off with a splash and get sick in the water.

He got it out eventually. He got Sam stitched up and cleaned and bandaged, fed him sips of whiskey until his eyes were muddy and unfocused. Dean wanted to get them off this fucking mountain, find a town and a room and a bed with white sheets for Sam, see if any of those cruddy little plaza stalls sold morphine. But Sam was passing out fast and so Dean got him wrapped in a blanket and tucked up against the base of a tree, settled him in for the night.

It was just early evening and Dean wasn't going to sleep. He laid a small circle of salt around his brother, tiny island like a fingerprint on the ocean, and went to find the other horse. He checked Garris's body while he was there and found that his pocket watch had a thumb-sized photograph fit into it, a pretty Spanish woman in a dress forty years out of fashion. Dean took the watch and the half-finished pack of tobacco, brought the horse back and settled cross-legged next to Sam. He counted the payroll money, making the coins clack and sing against each other. He watched his brother, Sam all hunched up with hurt lines written across his face.

Dean had a quick stab of that disquieting feeling again, that untethered odyssean sense of being half a world away from the place where he was born. He swallowed against it, forced it back. He had to remember, home was a small fire on the open land; home was the man still beside him.

Sam slept for a dozen hours at least, prodded awake by Dean to have some more whiskey every time he started moaning in his sleep. Sam blinked, found Dean's face in the murk and said something to him in Spanish, and Dean murmured, "Yeah, yeah, you're exactly right," hand cupped around the base of Sam's head levering him up to drink.

In the morning Sam was moaning more about his headache than anything else, still kinda drunk and moving stiff and sore. He pretended like he was too out of it to talk, but Dean thought it was probably just an act.

They made their way down the mountain gingerly, like their horses' hooves had turned to glass. Dean let Sam ride in front because he needed to keep an eye on him, make sure he didn't slip into unconsciousness and out of the saddle. Sam was slumped, riding with his shoulders in a broken tired curve and favoring his left side, and he only growled when Dean asked him if he was all right.

Coming into the foothills, Dean rode up abreast with his brother, angling looks at him from under his hat brim. Sam's mouth was twisted at the edges, his knuckles tight white stones.

"He didn't outdraw me," Dean said.

Sam twitched, looked over at Dean with molasses-slow surprise. "What?"

"Guy back there. I beat him on the draw."

Sam mulled over that. "Think my shoulder would beg to differ."

"I did." Dean wasn't defensive about it, honestly more like sad. "Coulda killed him before he touched the trigger, but I, I, I don't know what it was, I just _didn't_ for a second."

Dean glanced at Sam, rubbing the back of his neck and kinda shrugging. He was trying to forget the sounds Sam had made when Dean had had a knife in his shoulder. He remembered that moment, weapons in both hands and seeing the men reach and doing _nothing_, less than an eyeblink worth of time but still enough.

"Like missing that plug for Garris," Dean continued, his voice hoarse but he blamed the trail dust. "I don't know, man, maybe I'm losing it."

Sam snorted, spat. "Fat chance a that."

Dean glowered, wishing Sam would take him seriously. "How'd you explain it, then?"

"You missed the plug because you've never actually had to stand still and prove that you're a good shot to someone. You missed because you were calm; you know your eye's better the worse the adrenaline."

It sounded pretty good, though Sam was nothing like unbiased. Dean had overheard him bragging to strangers that his brother could outshoot a firing squad, which was probably how most of the stories about him got started up. Dean could appreciate the impulse, always three or four drinks in when he started wanting to tell people about how Sam was magic.

Dean made an inconclusive noise, a kinda acknowledging grunt that meant Sam's ideas were still under review but showing merit, and asked, "So what about the bandit, then?"

He should have just let it be, and Dean cursed himself as Sam stayed quiet for a moment. He knew what Sam was going to say; it felt like anyone on the planet could have been dropped into this moment and still known what Sam was going to say.

"He was a person, Dean. You let him reach because. He was just a guy."

Dean's stomach hiked and roiled, and he nodded foolishly, eyes locked on the steady roofs of the town below. He didn't feel any better and he didn't know what to say next.

Sam saved him from it, saying wearily, "So, no more going straight."

"Agreed."

"What, then?"

"Just the face, Sammy."

"You aren't, you know."

Something steely in Sam's tone and Dean looked over, found Sam looking back, color ripe on his cheeks, typical look of irritated affection on his face.

"You like to play like I'm the smart one," Sam told him. "But this whole thing, everything we do, it's you that keeps it going, not me."

Dean shook his head, feeling an instinctive refusal. "I just go where you go, that's all."

"Nah." Sam smiled, pressed his fingers lightly against the wound in his shoulder, testing it. "That's backwards, man. I been following you around my whole life."

"Jesus, no wonder we only ever go in circles."

Dean watched Sam smirking, his hand pallid against the rust-red stains on his shirt. Sam's skin was still a sallow ashen color, still in pain in ways that he would prefer not to let Dean see.

"The next place we go," Sam said, "we'll work on traveling in just one direction."

"Where's that?" Dean asked, a jumping feeling in his chest at the thought of all the other oceans they had left to cross.

Sam shrugged carefully with his good shoulder. He was mostly revived now, straighter in the saddle and casing the beautiful day.

"I don't know, Argentina or Chile, maybe? Maybe Australia."

"Australia?" Dean half-laughed; it sounded almost made-up the way Sam said it.

"Sure. They speak English there, so we wouldn't be foreigners. They got horses in Australia, hell, they got thousands of miles of land we can hide out in. Good climate, nice beaches. We'll go see what kinda monsters they got way down there, see who needs saving."

Dean thought about Bobby's leather-colored globe and how Australia had been so far south it almost seemed in danger of falling off the edge. He saw it in his mind as low rolling hills, linksland as green as the Amazon jungle, the ocean wide open, so blue there was no telling it from the sky.

"It's a long way, though, isn't it," Dean said just by rote, heard Sam blow out a breath.

"Ah, everything's gotta be perfect with you."

Grinning at nothing, Dean nickered his horse ahead, taking point again now that Sam was in a better state to watch his own back. He poured some water from the canteen into his hat, the sun at its zenith, cool trails eking down his neck and seeping into his shirt.

They rode into town blind and innocent as children, hundreds of eyes on them from behind the chipped walls.

There was a boy of maybe fourteen years old loitering in the courtyard outside the cantina, a frightened look on his face that stuck even when Dean tried to joke around by making his Spanish particularly bad, grinning all big and dumb and American. The boy took their horses and stuttered something that Dean didn't quite get, but Sam was saying, "_Bien, gracias_," so he figured it was all right.

Sam nudged him as they walked up to the cantina, and Dean turned, got an eyeful of white sunlight as Sam said:

"And I'll tell you what else-"

and then Dean was shot in the back.

It felt like a punch at first, solid jab just under his shoulder blade, and Dean was shoved forward, tripping almost off his feet. Then agony burst rich and full all through him, and he choked, half-bent over with his legs not working, his hands gone dead.

Sam was hollering his name, wild edge to it. He was taking hold of Dean and hauling him bodily somewhere and Dean couldn't see, his vision whited out by sun and dust and pain. Cracks all around them like ladder rungs snapping, a dim ferocious roar in the background and Dean's well-trained mind provided him with the make and model of the rifles and revolvers being fired before he quite registered the noise as gunshots.

He shook his eyes clear and latched onto Sam's shirt, each breath searing like acid. He could feel the bullet in his back, metal still white-hot cooking his flesh.

Then Sam cried out and his leg buckled and gave, almost pitching them both to the ground, he was shot, _again_, and Dean's heart jolted so hard against his ribs that it bruised. He wrenched up strength from somewhere and took up his brother's weight, dragging both of them hobbling and falling into the blessed shadow of the cantina.

Dean slammed down on his shoulder and anguish ripped through him. Sam was a little ways away, struggling up and screaming at someone across the room, "_Get out get the fuck out right now_," with feral power shredding his voice.

Dean forced his head up to see Sam thrusting his hand out, every muscle strung with tormented effort, and across the room a table flew massive and bulky through the air, crushing into two of the men standing there with their guns drawn and sending all six of them scurrying out the back patio, their expressions cast back in abhorrence.

Sam collapsed on the floor, sucking in huge wrecking gasps. Dean tried to push himself up and couldn't, the bullet an intractable weight. He coughed, face jammed against the stamped-smooth floor, and there was red mixing in with the dirt now.

"Dean," Sam moaned, and Dean tried to reach for him but it hurt so badly, made him half-yell and Sam was mumbling, "No, no, stay, don' move," and crawling close to him.

Sam tipped him carefully on his back, Dean's teeth slicing into the inside of his lip, and then Sam's hands were all over his face, his throat. Sam was crying, and Dean got a hand fisted in his brother's shirt, gasping at him.

"Dean, Dean, you're okay, it's all right," Sam said, all scored and jagged. His rough fingers scuffed hard under Dean's jaw.

"Yeah," Dean managed, tasting blood. "Sam, you, did you get-"

Sam shook his head, but said, "Just my leg, it's no problem."

"Jesus, Sammy," and Dean tried to sit up, see what kind of damage his idiot brother had managed to incur, but Sam held him down. His mouth was like a wire, his eyes bigger than Dean could ever remember, swimming at him.

"Just stay there, Dean, please."

Sam slid away, dragging his leg behind him and Dean could see it, the blood soaking his pants around a wound in his lower thigh. The stitches at his shoulder were open again too, wet crimson re-dyeing his shirt, and Dean wanted to say something about how soon Sam's clothes would match perfectly, but he didn't because he was afraid he'd break down entirely.

Breathing raggedly and unsteady, stifling most of his groans, Sam slumped against the wall, hands cupped carefully around his leg. He hissed, tried to breathe out slow.

"Sam," Dean said in a croak. "Why is this happening again?"

Sam tipped his head back on the wall, his long throat dirty-brown and streaked with sweat. Dean could see the dangerous flutter of his pulse in his throat.

"It's not demons," Sam told him. "They wouldn't have run."

"We, we haven't done anything," Dean said, his voice breaking. "What have we done?"

The pain in his back was leveling, a crippling riptide instead of a tidal wave, and he wedged an elbow under himself, shoved up despite Sam saying his name half-desperate. Dean pulled himself to sit against the wall next to his brother, canting onto him because he couldn't brace his back. Sam's hand fumbled for his knee and his side, reaching up to gracelessly palm across his face.

"'s okay, Dean, it's gonna be okay."

"Sam." Dean had his face hidden in Sam's shoulder, reaching to curl his hand around his brother's neck. He could feel Sam's heart racing, his skin too hot. "Can you get us out?"

Sam's chest hitched under him, a terrified thrum low in his throat. "I. Yes."

Dean pushed up, his face contorted. He got a look at Sam's eyes, brilliant and white with pain. His muscles were shivering under Dean's hands.

"You can't."

Lines of metal showed up in Sam's expression. He glared at his brother, both hands cradling Dean's head and neither of them was talking about that.

"I _can_," Sam insisted. "I can hold 'em off long enough for us to get to the horses, at least. Long as it's the last thing I have to do, I can do it."

Dean shook his head, coughing weakly against his hand and it speckled red and Sam's face became stricken. Dean thought it was probably a pretty good bet that he was dying.

"You don't even know how many are out there."

Sam swept his thumbs along Dean's cheekbones, tear tracks cut clear down his face. He looked manic, power burring in him and Dean wanted so badly to believe that it could be enough.

"I think the six in here were the bulk of it," Sam told him, dead certain. "Maybe three or four left out there to drive us inside so they could finish us off in close quarters."

Dean clutched at Sam's wrist, trying to remember how many individual weapons he'd heard discharged out there, but it was all clamor and din in his memory, the drill of the bullet, Sam crying out. He squeezed his eyes shut, felt a single tear burn down his cheek. Sam wiped it away, pressed his mouth to the edge of Dean's, pleading to him, swearing:

"I can take ten, Dean, I can get us out."

Dean nodded without opening his eyes, and then turned away from Sam, keening in pain and spitting a mouthful of blood onto the ground. He felt dizzy, drunk from it, the slug lodged very close to his heart.

He slumped back on his brother.

"Okay, Sammy, I believe you, I know you can."

Dean kept his eyes closed. Sam wouldn't be able to tell he was lying if his eyes were closed.

Dean's nerves weren't really working, his fingers thick and numb around the Colt, so Sam took his brother's hand in both of his and used his handkerchief to tie the gun to Dean's hand. Sam rested his forehead against Dean's as he worked, breathing unevenly and biting his lip.

There were things that Dean should have said. He stared at his brother's intent face and thought of all the standards and everything he had planned for this moment. It was always going to come down to this, to dirt and blood, and there was a proper epitaph somewhere, the farewell this whole catastrophe truly deserved, but it wasn't for Dean to say. No matter what Sam thought, Dean had never been the smart one.

So Dean didn't mention it. Sam pulled himself to his feet using the wall and pulled Dean up after him, and they leaned there catching their breath, looking at each other and Sam kinda smiled, so Dean was obliged to smile back. Dean could feel his pulse start to go shocky and fitful and he didn't mention that either.

"Soon as we get to the horses-" Sam started to say, then stopped. He lifted his hand to Dean's face, his throat ducking as he swallowed. Sam's face was heartbroken and alight, glittering with dismay, and Dean knew that he wasn't fooling him at all, not for a second. Dean had to laugh, sagging into his brother's arms.

"Ride like the devil's chasing," Dean mumbled into Sam's throat, and Sam made a sound that was more sob than laugh, fingers carding hard through Dean's hair.

Sam pulled Dean back, wiped the blood off his mouth, and kissed him. Dean kissed him back, and wished that it could happen now, just like this, the two of them holding each other up against the wall, this perfect quiet moment that they'd found.

He got one more look at his brother, one more chance to love him like crazy, as Sam sidled up to the door and swiped his forearm across his face. The sunlight fell in huge chunks, packed with clouds of dust thick as cotton, and Dean saw the light angled across Sam, drawing his planes into sharp relief and making him glow all over.

It seemed true then, at that moment. Dean's vision was graying in and out and he couldn't feel the gun bound to his hand, and his faith came flooding back, staggering him. Sam was lit up gold and Dean believed him, believed him with everything and all he had. There were only ten men out there and Sam could take them. Sam could do anything.

Sam looked over at him, gave him a reckless grin that unlocked some last small piece of Dean, opened him up all the way for the very first time, and then together they ran through the door, out into the pure white light of day.

THE END

Endnotes: The major events of the plot and all the best lines of dialogue are from _Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid_, written by William Goldman.


End file.
